Butternut Squash Soup

Butternut squash (along with the good old pumpkin) is such an unappreciated vegetable; most people will, at best, only ever eat it around Halloween time, but it’s in season all through the Winter so there’s no reason not to make much more of it.

Ingredients

1 butternut squash
1 large brown onion
2 large potatoes
3 cloves of garlic
around 1 pint of chicken stock
1 teaspoon ground cumin (optional)
a generous pinch of salt and pepper
olive oil

Makes around 4 portions

Method

Chop the squash in half, lengthways. Remove the seeds then chop the squash into chunks, leaving the skin on. Peel the potatoes and the onion, then chop these into chunks as well.

Put the squash, potatoes, onion and garlic (with skin on) into a large roasting tin. Drizzle oil over the vegetables and sprinkle the cumin, salt and pepper all over. Roast for around 25 minutes at about 200 degrees.

The vegetables should have softened up in the oven. Take out the garlic cloves and remove their skins.

Place the roasted veg (and skinless garlic) into a food processor and whizz them up while gradually adding the chicken stock, until you get a tasty mush of vegetables.

Transfer the puree to a saucepan and warm it through. You can add more stock/water if you like a runny soup, or you can boil off some of the stock already added if you like it thicker.

You could serve this with a small amount of creme fraiche, some chopped spring onions and a sprinkle of salt and pepper.

Tasty, warming Winter food. Delicious!