Roasted Butternut Squash Soup & Curry Condiments
- By Katie Roche
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- 17 Nov, 2018
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Butternut squash is one of those foods that I like in theory but that, when I actually eat it, just is never what I wanted it to be. I have tried a number of butternut squash soups and have made Ina's butternut squash risotto and all of these things end up being those leftovers that sit in your fridge for like two weeks because although you say you liked whatever it is, you just keep finding excuses to eat other things. Nevertheless, I still usually think, when I see a butternut squash recipe, "Oh yeah, that sounds cozy and fall-ish and nice!" This was no exception, but the other half of the title, "curry condiments", had me a little like...???
Since Dan is home (!!!) he volunteered for the ItemQuest on this one, which was mostly just for curry powder. Sending your husband to the store is nice because you don't have to actually GO, but you do kind of end up "going" anyway, via the cumulative duration of the six or seven phone calls you inevitably get while he's trying to find whatever you sent him to find. In praise of my husband, he is better about this than most, and only called me once on this one, to ask whether I wanted salted or unsalted cashews. Salted, always, everything. I love salt. He then came home and took the ingredients picture, and then took it again in portrait mode with his fancy new iPhone.
Since Dan is home (!!!) he volunteered for the ItemQuest on this one, which was mostly just for curry powder. Sending your husband to the store is nice because you don't have to actually GO, but you do kind of end up "going" anyway, via the cumulative duration of the six or seven phone calls you inevitably get while he's trying to find whatever you sent him to find. In praise of my husband, he is better about this than most, and only called me once on this one, to ask whether I wanted salted or unsalted cashews. Salted, always, everything. I love salt. He then came home and took the ingredients picture, and then took it again in portrait mode with his fancy new iPhone.
Normal picture...
And then picture with curry in "portrait mode", looking rather self-important for something which, when I opened it and took a whiff, identified as the exact smell of chicken ramen seasoning. Not the kind from the fancy ramen you can buy now either, I mean the kind that everybody compares to Justin Timberlake's hair. I am very familiar with this scent, as chicken ramen was my Sunday night dinner for my entire childhood. We would come home from evening service at church and eat it in front of the TV before bed while my dad had us watch "animals eating each other" (the Discovery Channel). I had never used curry powder before this, and didn't know that although there is such thing as a curry plant, the curry powder we buy is usually just a spice blend of things like turmeric and cumin.
While Dan helped me prepare the squash, apple, and onion for roasting, I got the coconut for the topping toasting in the oven per Ina's uncharacteristically vague instructions: "5-10 minutes". After five minutes, it didn't look toasty enough so I gave it five more, and it came out looking that one old lady at the pool who never wears sunscreen because she wants to tan. I didn't know anything but my skin could go from white to burned in such a short period of time, but alas:
While Dan helped me prepare the squash, apple, and onion for roasting, I got the coconut for the topping toasting in the oven per Ina's uncharacteristically vague instructions: "5-10 minutes". After five minutes, it didn't look toasty enough so I gave it five more, and it came out looking that one old lady at the pool who never wears sunscreen because she wants to tan. I didn't know anything but my skin could go from white to burned in such a short period of time, but alas:
I tossed it and started over, and can now tell you that, at least in my oven, seven minutes is the ideal time for toasting coconut.
The cubed squash, onions, and apples were ready for their oven voyage with olive oil and salt and peppa for seasoning. Dan did not call me about what type of apple to buy and bought the gross kind (i.e., not Honeycrisp) because he said he thought it wouldn't matter in soup. This isn't really relevant, I'm just still salty about it.
45 minutes later:
At this point you puree everything in batches and put it in a soup pot to add seasonings and heat through.
While it heated, I prepared the toppings. Green onions? Ok. Chopped cashews? Sure. Toasted coconut? Not my fave, due to its fingernail-like texture, but I'll live. Lastly, diced bananas. This, I feel, has crossed a line that shouldn't be crossed. Not one person with whom I discussed the bananas-as-soup-topping issue felt positively about it. I don't like bananas in anything to begin with (I only eat them by themselves) due to the fact that as soon as you put banana in something, all it tastes like is banana. My aversion to banana-flavored things is so strong that even when I ask people what kind of cake or whatever they want for their birthday, if they bring up anything involving banana, I veto it. It's harsh, I know, but I will not make a banana cream pie. I refuse. Dan, for his part, refused all of the toppings except green onion. I had to let it slide for him, but unfortunately, Me, Myself, and Ina had to try it, as I've heard people say in the south, "all the way".
So into my bowl went the slimy banana chunks. The color of the soup was off-putting enough to begin with so between that and the banana chunks I was having a hard time getting excited. I just kept thinking about my friend in college whose favorite food was banana baby food. I used to slip jars of Gerber banana in his campus mailbox during high-stress times, like exams or whatever. He asked me to try it once, so I did, and I gagged really hard. I sort of felt like we were about to have episode two of that when I dipped a spoon into this action.
Ina's picture looks like more of a nice burnt-orange color; mine looks like a color that would be nice as a cardigan or a scarf but not as something you really want to be putting in your mouth. The redemption of all of this was the serving suggestion by a friend to pair it with grilled cheese.
#westcoastbestcoast, this is a dairy brand from Oregon that make the best cheese ever. This particular product came from Costco (blessed be The Costco) and you can find some of their other products in the fancy cheese sections of grocery stores around here. I have, on occasions of extreme sadness, paid out the butt at Publix for 8 ounces of Tillamook extra sharp yellow cheddar to make myself macaroni and cheese like my mom used to make. If you're a cheese person, it's worth your dollars to give it a try. It's just another one of those hard-to-find items in southern grocery stores that makes me long for the sweet embrace of the northwest. Maybe the cows down here are unhappy because they're sweating too hard, I don't know, but they just don't make cheese like this in these parts.
So here it is...I ate this bowl with as good of grace as my soup-banana aversion could muster, said it was ok (it was), but mostly thought it tasted like some vegetables had a baby with a ramen packet. I had every good intention of eating it for leftovers on Sunday after our hockey game, and then we ate pizza instead. If you're really into butternut squash, I would go a more traditional route and leave out the curry and maybe top with some crispy sage leaves or something. I'll leave you with this enticing picture that Dan took while getting carried away with his photography, and some lessons: 1) 10 mins in the oven is too long for your coconut and 10 mins in the earth-oven without sunscreen is also bad. 2) Sometimes when you think two foods don't go together (banana and soup), you're actually right and you don't need to feel like you're not an adventurous eater. Some adventures just aren't a good idea...venturing to Mordor to destroy the one ring that rules them all? Good. Hiking alone in areas with lots of bear activity/bananas in soup/attempting marathons with no training? Bad. Use your judgment. Don't banana your soup.
For this post, I wanted to combine two summertime flavors into the crisp recipe one of my oldest Alaskan friends passed on to me years ago. Rhubarb, if you're unfamiliar, is a reddish stalk that kind of resembles really big celery. It's very tart and is most commonly paired with strawberry. I've rarely seen it star in its own show dessert-wise, but my friend Kylee has been making rhubarb crisp for years and it's the best crisp I know of. Blueberries are usually in season in late summer; I have not been home for a blueberry season since Dan's last deployment in 2018 so in order to make this recipe I actually used blueberries from a friend's parents' farm in upstate SC! They're a little sweeter than the blueberries I'd have picked at home, but they worked well. I'm going to pretend like I was actually picking blueberries at home in Alaska for the purpose of showing you what that would look like.
I was getting all ready to write this post, going through my process with photos starting in my kitchen when I realized that a lot of my friends probably don't know what fireweed is or where it comes from and this recipe actually starts far, far away from my kitchen. This will be the first of a few posts highlighting iconic Alaskan ingredients. I've wanted to do this for a while because my home inspires me in so many ways, writing and cooking particular among them. Fireweed is a wildflower that is rather ubiquitous in southcentral Alaska and is often considered a gauge for how long summer will last. It is said that when the blooms reach the top of the plant, winter is six weeks away. Whether or not that's accurate, fireweed is found all over in late summer in Alaska. Here is some I spotted in mid-July by Eklutna Lake:
If you know Dan and me very well, you probably know by now that if our life were a sitcom, he'd low-key be the funniest character. Because that is true, I thought I'd include his bottom ten with accompanying remarks before giving the actual bottom ten. His are hilarious, but aren't as legitimate as mine because he actually tried way fewer of these than one might think. I realized as he was flipping through the book that my old coworker Cam probably ate more of these foods than anyone else did. The overarching theme of Dan's song of Ina Garten hatred is not the actual taste of the finished product but more how asinine he finds that particular recipe to be. So here you are, Dan's bottom ten.
#1: Butternut Squash Soup
#1: Butternut Squash Soup
You guys asked for my top ten from the blog, so here we go! And I'm thinking that what you *really* want is actually the bottom ten, so I'll go ahead and give you those next week. That post will probably be A LOT funnier. While preparing to write this post, I had Dan flip through the cookbook to give me HIS top ten and he was all disgruntled as he did so and only came up with eight that he even liked at all. "I'm not a picky eater!" he insists. Yeah ok. Although to be fair, I've seen some cookbooks I would only make, like, one thing out of and plenty I'd make nothing out of, though sometimes that's because I find the chef so annoying. @ the Pioneer Woman. I just don't trust someone who puts sour cream in spaghetti and then bakes it. Plus all her recipe intros are about, like, Ladd or Tadd or whatever the heck her husband's name is "coming in from the fields starving for dinner". If I came in from working in a field and you tried to give me sour cream spaghetti, I'd be like, "How about a hot pocket instead? Thx." Anyway, this is not Dan's blog so these are not his top ten. You can ask him which ones he liked, but you'll end up in a long convo about how much he hates Ina Garten. Anyway, these are not ranked or anything, they're just in order from the cookbook.
So with that, #1: Juice of a Few Flowers
So with that, #1: Juice of a Few Flowers
It was Sunday afternoon and I thought to myself, "What a perfect time to make jam!" I mean, how positively quaint: just sitting in my home in suburbia, finished with weekend chores, relaxing with some knitting...why not? Why not make some jam? I mean, obviously my afternoon-kitchen-activity was directed toward jam-making because it was next up in the book BUT whatever, I was kind of excited! Also, this is the last recipe in this book!!! I'm still in the process of deciding what I'll do now, so if there's something you'd like me to make and tell you about in my own fashion - you know, with lots of tangents and jokes - please do let me know! I'll likely continue to tackle Ina content, but may start including some recipe faves and/or foods people text me about a lot! I get a lot of cake questions, a LOT of frosting questions (because meringue buttercream is bae and I've got everyone in my social circles who eats my food on board), and a lot of fish questions. So look for more food to come, even though this is the last recipe in Back to Basics.
We went to Publix to ItemQuest for this and Dan said, "Don't we already have strawberries???" And I had to confess that I had eaten them all because it's honestly amazing how good fruit can be when it's 1) in season, 2) somewhat local, and 3) not ludicrously expensive. I'm about to travel home to Alaska for about a month, and it's going to put a real damper on my current fruit-snacking habits when I go into Fred Meyer for some strawbs and they're like, $7/lb and already trying to be moldy. Also needed blueberries (partly for the jam, mostly for the snax), one Granny Smith apple, and more superfine sugar. Publix had all of these things, plus about a million old people 'cause Sunday + Publix = Old People City.
We went to Publix to ItemQuest for this and Dan said, "Don't we already have strawberries???" And I had to confess that I had eaten them all because it's honestly amazing how good fruit can be when it's 1) in season, 2) somewhat local, and 3) not ludicrously expensive. I'm about to travel home to Alaska for about a month, and it's going to put a real damper on my current fruit-snacking habits when I go into Fred Meyer for some strawbs and they're like, $7/lb and already trying to be moldy. Also needed blueberries (partly for the jam, mostly for the snax), one Granny Smith apple, and more superfine sugar. Publix had all of these things, plus about a million old people 'cause Sunday + Publix = Old People City.
I was glad Ina gave me something easy for this week, because I was packing for Alaska and just *did not have the time* to mess with hunting lobsters or weird cheeses from the internet or whatever. ItemQuest was fairly straightforward, just took Dan a trip to the liquor store next to the Publix for some limoncello. I grabbed this particular lemon curd in the British aisle of Publix; I think last time an Ina recipe called for lemon curd I bought it from Trader Joe's and it was DISGUSTING. I mean, truly awful. I would like to recommend making your own lemon curd if you have the time and the inclination. Ina's lemon curd recipe is phenomenal and it is one thing for which I can say she is truly correct: homemade is BETTER and store-bought is not at all as good. The most beloved cupcakes I have ever made were filled with Ina's lemon curd, and had the lemon curd mixed into the meringue buttercream frosting. HIGHLY RECOMMEND!!! Anyway, the rest of this was fruit that I had on hand, mint, and Greek yogurt which we did have to buy because I don't, as a rule, eat Greek yogurt of my own free will. It's chalky and disgusting.
Dates are something I honestly never even thought about until I did Whole 30. I have mentioned my Whole 30 experience several times over the course of this journey through Back to Basics, but if you're new to reading the blog, this is what happened: I did Whole 30 one time, just to prove that I could, because salvation-by-diet apologists were obsessed with it as the newest fad in righteous eating practices. It was a terrible experience; on top of hating every minute of it for myself and finding exactly zero wellness benefits, I also hated it for Dan who was not allowed to eat popcorn for 30 days. Dan is in love with popcorn; his addiction to it is almost at the level of my addiction to coffee. He gets rage-y without it. But anyway, Whole 30 recipes are big into dates as sweeteners and some of the things you can eat, like Lara Bars, are made with dates. Dates are impossibly chewy. I ate more of them in that 30 days than I ever wanted to, and now when I see them in recipes I can't help but think of that Whole 30. Fortunately for me, I got to begin this recipe by chopping TWO CUPS' worth of dates. Oh, they also kind of look like cockroach bodies, so there's that. The only thing I actually had to get at the store for this was oranges! I had everything else on hand, even Cointreau, thanks to many previous Ina recipes.
Alright so, I'm not the Muffin Man. I don't really make a whole lot of muffins, for a lot of reasons, one of the main ones being that on the rankings of breakfast foods they definitely do not crack the top five, maybe not even the top ten. If I have an option for a bagel or a waffle, I'll pick one of them over a muffin every single time. I also prefer cereal, cinnamon rolls, or *cue eye roll* avocado toast. I've just never risen from my slumber and been like, "You know what would really hit the spot right now? A MUFFIN." But!!! In recent months, since my friend Logan came into my life, I've been making muffins a lot more frequently because he really loves them. So the last blueberry muffins I made were from a 99cent Betty Crocker mix packet which he brought into my house and asked me sweetly to make, because they're what he grew up with and along with many preservatives, they are full of nostalgia for him. Here is Logan and me, preparing to mix the muffin batter. Out of respect (and to make up for the disrespect of rolling up with muffin mix), he wore one of my aprons. I will treasure this picture forever.
You guys...Ina has "a thing" about commercial granola bars. Her beef with them, apparently, is that they say they contain real fruit and nuts but that all she sees when she looks at the labels are like, ten different kinds of corn syrup. I'm going to go ahead and guess, just based on this, that none of the lunches her mom packed for her growing up contained any Fruit By the Foot. And surely if we introduced her to Gushers, she would die. This is a real shame. I also feel like this disdain for corn syrup is maybe just a tad self-righteous, coming from the woman whose frosting recipe calls for literally six entire sticks of butter. At that point, what's a little corn syrup to you really? People's nutritional hills-to-die-on really fascinate me (and also kind of annoy me sometimes) and the ones about sugar might get me the most. I feel like, at some point, sugar is sugar and whether you're baking with honey, white sugar, brown sugar, molasses, maple syrup, etc you're still probably making something that's not amazing for you so, in terms of sugar, why not just be in for a penny in for a pound, amirite? So while I'm on this topic, before I even get to the actual point (please, I know you're here for the tangents), I would like to just let anyone and everyone know that I'm absolutely not interested in your "healthy substitutes" for things that taste good in their original form. I do not WANT a chocolate chip pancake made out of bananas and grains you harvested in your field this morning. If I want a banana I will eat one, and if I want a chocolate chip pancake I will eat one, and that's that. And DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT come @ me with "cashew cheese". Just don't. I don't even think I should honor that concept with an explanation of why it's so wrong. If that's not self-evident, I can't help you.
So down to the granola bar ingredients. I rolled up to Kroger only to find that their already meager bulk bins had been EMPTIED because if you scoop dates into a bag and then someone else scoops dates into a bag, you might get the coronavirus. I'm glad they've taken the precaution of removing this shopping option, since I cannot resisting licking my hands after every grocery trip I make. Thankfully, they still had the lil tower of small containers of some of the weirder items right there in the organic section, which was where I was able to find dates. The rest of this stuff was on the baking aisle, with the exception of wheat germ which was, for some reason, with the cereal. I'm still kind of unclear on what wheat germ is actually used for by people, and the context of it being located on the cereal aisle makes me wonder even more. Do people eat it like grape nuts? Sprinkle it on stuff like how people like to do with nutritional yeast right now? ("It tastes just like cheese!" You know what else tastes like cheese? Actual cheese. You're welcome.) Anyway, I was very grateful that Kroger at least had everything I needed and I didn't have to go on a for real ItemQuest.
So down to the granola bar ingredients. I rolled up to Kroger only to find that their already meager bulk bins had been EMPTIED because if you scoop dates into a bag and then someone else scoops dates into a bag, you might get the coronavirus. I'm glad they've taken the precaution of removing this shopping option, since I cannot resisting licking my hands after every grocery trip I make. Thankfully, they still had the lil tower of small containers of some of the weirder items right there in the organic section, which was where I was able to find dates. The rest of this stuff was on the baking aisle, with the exception of wheat germ which was, for some reason, with the cereal. I'm still kind of unclear on what wheat germ is actually used for by people, and the context of it being located on the cereal aisle makes me wonder even more. Do people eat it like grape nuts? Sprinkle it on stuff like how people like to do with nutritional yeast right now? ("It tastes just like cheese!" You know what else tastes like cheese? Actual cheese. You're welcome.) Anyway, I was very grateful that Kroger at least had everything I needed and I didn't have to go on a for real ItemQuest.
At first I saw the pictures of this and thought, "YAY!!! Cinnamon rolls!" And then a couple of weeks ago, I actually tried making cinnamon rolls for the first time and realized that my inability to roll/shape/slice yeast doughs is still a thing. AND THEN I read this entire recipe and realized these get filled with raisins. So here we go!
ItemQuest was only dramatic because the stores just DID NOT have puff pastry sheets; I was only finding it in "shells". I tried Bi-Lo and Dan tried Food Lion before he finally located sheets at Publix. The rest of the ingredients, I already had on hand!
ItemQuest was only dramatic because the stores just DID NOT have puff pastry sheets; I was only finding it in "shells". I tried Bi-Lo and Dan tried Food Lion before he finally located sheets at Publix. The rest of the ingredients, I already had on hand!