Butternut McSquashinsteen

Giuseppe the Italian-Stereotype Wine-Bottle man and
official mascot of Chez Venza says: "Eat-a Your Soup-a!"

Ohhhhh butternut.  Soooooo buttery and nutty.      



Squashy.



We don’t cook with butternut squash very often.  It’s one of those “winter” vegetables that everyone associates with Thanksgiving (and…“winter”).  We’ve been on a soup kick lately, especially with our new immersion blender.  So now that the first “cold front” has finally made it’s way to Austin, it seemed the perfect time to try out butternut squash soup.  We found a couple different recipes but decided to go with this one from Cook’s Illustrated magazine (yes, we subscribe a few cooking magazines).  This recipe tries to be quick and easy by using the microwave to jump start the cooking time on the squash.  More on that later.



Up until this recipe, we’d only ever cooked with butternut squash one time before.  The one thing we learned is that this silly little squash has a very weird starchiness that gets on your hands and is hard to get off.  Thus, the gloves.

 
    


Into the microwave for 18 minutes to soften (it is a little weird to set your microwave for 18 minutes, by the way).  Then it sits in a colander to drain off any excess liquid.

Next strange vegetable on the list….leeks.  It’s a type of mild onion.  You really only use the white and light green parts.  It typically has a lot of grit and dirt wedged inside of it from when it was growing in the earth.  But that's how you know your food came from the ground, right, and not produced in some laboratory?  So it should be comforting, not gross!  Anyway, cut it on a plastic board, or you’ll get mud on your good wooden cutting board. 
Then, thoroughly rinse the pieces.  A good tip for drying it is to use a salad spinner, if you have one.


 

Now, it's finally time to cook something on the stove! 



The CIA wishes it could Squash Leeks like this.  Get it?



All that dark stuff at the bottom of the pot is pure flavor, baby.  A whole boat full of flavor!



And then… PUREE.  Gotta find those squash pieces and obliterate them!  The blender saves on dishes, but it requires a bit of diligence!



Ta-da! The Butternut Squash Soup!  The recipe had us make a fried leek garnish (basically fried onion strips)…they weren’t awesome so we won't get into the details on that.  The soup is great with just a dollop of sour cream.  It's like Autumn in a bowl!