OK, I’ll go easy on you guys today!  No more heavy stuff, at least for the next 24 hours…<g>  This one will be quick and easy, with lots of payback.  It’s a soup recipe.  You know, it’s that time of year, when soup, bread and salad just seems to make perfect sense.

This is one of my favorites, which has amazed and delighted family and guests over the years.  I originally got the recipe from Mikhail Zakin, founder and ceramics director of the Old Church Cultural Center in Demarest, NJ.  They sponsor one of the country’s absolute best ceramics sales every year, the first weekend in December (http://tasoc.org) and Mikhail always made up a batch of butternut squash soup for the Friday night setup dinner for the artists and volunteers.  Now Mikhail is a wonderful woman, potter, sculptor and inspiration, but I won’t wax enthusiastic about her for too long.  Google her and see what she has done over the years.  Anyway, some years ago I gave a workshop there and asked if she would mind sending me the recipe for that wonderful soup.  She did, and I’ve made it many times.  It’s morphed over the years into something a bit different, so I don’t know if she would approve of the changes and still put her name on it, but here it is:

CURRIED BUTTERNUT SQUASH SOUP

(an adaptation of Mikhail Zakin’s Demarest recipe)

I’m writing this down as I’m cooking the soup, so the quantities are what I’m using for this batch…as you’ll find out, the proportions are variable, and using things on hand works just fine, too

Ingredients

2 small butternut squash(what I’m using), or one big one, enough to fill a 9 x 13 pan

1 large sweet onion, Spanish or Vidalia, or Texas or Walla Walla sweet

3 cloves garlic

1 peeled section of very fresh ginger (important to use fresh ginger!), about 1 ¾ inches long and pretty thick

approx 40 ounces of chicken stock (for the studio sale I am using vegetable stock) (you can adjust if the soup is too thick when blended) (I’m using one can of stock and two bouillion cubes)

1 can of beans, drained (I’m using Great Northern) for texture

several scoops of chunky peanut butter

lemon juice, 2-3 tablespoons, as a flavor enhancer

curry powder to taste

Tabasco sauce or Oriental Sweet Chili sauce (what I’m using) to taste, for a bit of zip

Salt and pepper to taste

Put about ½ inch of water in the 9 x 13 roasting pan, and halve the squash lengthwise, deseeding before putting in the oven, at 350 degrees, for about 45 minutes, or until soft in the thickest part, which would be the neck, near the body.  (I also bake them ahead of time, peel them, and then freeze them, which amkes it easy to put together later.)

While the squash is baking, peel the ginger, garlic and onion, and dice, then sauté in the soup pan with a light flavored oil, such as canola.  Olive oil or sesame oil are too strongly flavored to use in this soup.

Saute til soft and transparent, then add the soup stock.  When the squash have cooled enough to peel, do so, and then add the chunks of squash to the onions and stock mix, and simmer for about 20 minutes, til they’ve further softened and blended.  At this point, either puree with a food processor, or using an immersion blender stick (I’ve just started using this, and it’s great for this job!)  When the soup is pureed, add the dollops of peanut butter, the lemon juice, the beans, the chili sauce, and the curry powder to taste, and allow to cook on low to medium temperature to blend the ingredients and the flavors.  Adjust thickness, and serve.  (When thicker, I’m told by others that this amkes a nice pasta sauce.)

I’m going to make croutons for this batch of soup, since I’ve got some old crusty bread. 

Enjoy!

Richard Aerni

Rochester, NY

 So, try it, and if you like it, pass it on.  But remember, like a glaze recipe, to give credit to the originator…Mikhail.   Now, my son is heading over for dinner tonight so I’ve got to get back to the stove.

Bon appetit!

This entry was posted on 13. November 2008 at 18:44 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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