Butternut Squash Soup

For sunday dinner (lunch), I opted for a smooth, creamy butternut squash soup, with fresh baked garlic cheddar biscuits.

And Anali, (one of my housemates) made this little garlic friend from a garlic which had sprouted in our cupboard.

For the butternut squash soup, i actually started way too late to make it properly, so i was scrambling to get things done. Here's how i made butternut squash soup and garlic cheddar biscuits in just a little over an hour.

I started by preparing three butternut squash (squashes? squashi?). Cut them in half longways, and remove the seeds. Then i microwaved them (one squash at a time) for about seven minutes each. This got the squash mostly cooked, and made it pretty easy to remove the skins. I cut them into about 1" cubes, and put them in a large pot with boiling veggie broth, to finish them cooking.

While the butternut boiled, I chopped up a large yellow onion, and cooked it in some olive oil until it began to caramelize. By this time the kitchen was filled with the sweet, rich scents of the butternut squash, and that wonderful smell of caramelizing onions. And like clockwork, all of the sudden people begin to show up in the kitchen.

With both of those items cooking on the stove, I started on a basic biscuit recipe. After turning the oven on to about 435 degrees to warm up, I mixed the shortening with the dry ingredients. Here i added two cloves of minced garlic, as well as some oregano and some basil. I mixed in some milk and mixed it all up.

Back to the soup, I added the onions into the pot, and seasoned everything with salt, thyme, and a little chili powder. Then I began to mix everything together, using a potato masher to break up the chunks of squash.

Here's where it came in handy to have extra people loitering in the kitchen. Anali had found a clove of garlic which i had set aside because it had sprouted, and made him into the fun little guy you see up in the top corner there. When she finished, i put her to work blending the soup. Just poured it into a blender, about two or three cups at a time, to get it to a nice smooth consistency.

This freed me up to finish up the biscuits. I took some shredded cheddar and just sort of kneaded it into the biscuit dough, then separated the dough into biscuit sized portions, placed it on a baking sheet fairly close together, and tossed it in the hot oven.

Now Anali had finished with the blending of the soup, so I poured it all back into my pot on the stove, and added the final few touches. To make the soup creamier, i added one can of coconut milk (regular milk, or cream would have been fine, but I just can't get enough coconut milk).

Follow that up with some red wine vinegar and just a touch of sriracha to take a little of the sweet edge off of it. Then salt and pepper to taste. I even had some time to relax as the biscuits finished up, before 12:30 rolled around and we all sat down to lunch.

It's a nice warming soup for cold snowy chicago days. And a good use of seasonal vegetables.