Roasted Garlic & Butternut Squash Soup
Butternut Squash is a funny little vegetable - well I guess mostly it's a funny fairly large vegetable - but doesn't it look very like a melon when you cut it open. They must be related. I did a brief a search. Very brief. And came up with nothing. But they must be related. Some vegetable out there knows the story but just isn't letting on. And since there are seeds inside, is it actually a fruit? Strange little (or medium to large) vegetable (or possibly fruit). It's very good for you though. Actually it's pretty easy to find out that they are related - I guess during the first search I was too distracted by the eijit asking why do they smell alike, must be a synesthete.
Garlic is another strange little whatever-it-is. It also is very good for you. And can ward off creatures that don't exist. Nothing worse than being intimidated by creatures that don't exist.
So this is a strange little soup you can make when you are being bothered by the very imaginable unknown. It won't help but it tastes nice.
I top the soup with some roasted cherry tomatoes mashed with salt and ground coriander. For the photos I kept a couple of tomatoes whole and added them in. I thought it looked a little better that way but it tastes better using only the mash.
The way I make Roasted Garlic & Butternut Squash Soup is
Ingredients
Serves 4
- 1 large butternut squash, deseeded and chopped into bite-size chunks
- 3 garlic heads
- 2 medium sized potatoes, peeled and diced small
- 1 sprig fresh rosemary
- pinch chili powder
- 500ml/ 1 pint hot water
- 100ml soya milk
- 20 - 25 cherry tomatoes
- 1/4 tsp ground coriander
- salt
- 4 tbsp olive oil
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 200° C/ 400° F/ Gas Mark 6.
- Cover the base of an oven-proof dish or baking tin with the olive oil. There should be a thick layer of olive oil in the dish or tin - if not add a little more oil
- Add the butternut-squash to the tin. Stir around and turn over so that they are covered in the oil.
- With a large sharp kitchen knife cut across the base of garlic head completely removing the hard "root". Having done this you should have 3/4 cloves left in the "baseless" garlic heads. Place these in the oven dish, open-clove-side down. Do not remove the outer dry white skin of the bulbs. When they are roasted this skin should come off easily - like a hat.
- Place the dish/tin in the oven for 20 minutes or until until the butternut squash and garlic have just begun to caramelize (turn brown).
- 10 minutes before the butternut squash is ready, heat a little olive oil in a saucepan, add the diced potato, sprinkle with salt, cover the pan and leave to soften at a low heat.
- When the garlic and butternut squash are ready, take out and turn off the oven. Remove the skin from the garlic and add the garlic and butternut squash to the potato.
- Mash the butternut squash and garlic into the potato. Sprinkle over a pinch of chili powder and mash it in. Add the sprig of rosemary and pour over the hot water. Bring to the boil and then reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes.
- While the soup is simmering, put the cherry tomatoes in the tin or dish that you used to roast the garlic and butternut squash. Put the dish back in the still warm oven. You might want to take them out and give the tin a bit of shake every so often.
- After the 20 minutes, remove the sprig of rosemary from the soup, taste and add salt if necessary. Puree with a blender. Remove from the heat and stir in the soya milk. Make sure to use full fat soya milk as the light stuff tastes terribly chalky but the full-fat soya make this lovely and creamy and it's not "bad fat".
- Take the tomatoes out of the oven. Leave them in the tin but scrape off and discard their skins. With a fork mash up the tomatoes with the ground coriander and salt. There should still be the remains of some caramelized garlic and butternut squash in the tin so make sure and scrape of this in with the tomatoes.
- When serving add several dots of the mashed tomatoes on top of the soup.