Thursday, September 12, 2013

My house smells incredible :D

I LOVE FALL !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I really really really love fall! lol
makes me want to shout with joy :D
One of the many many many things i love about fall is SOUP :D SOUP :D SOUP :D
Ok, i'm shouting and repeating myself ad nauseum but i'm just so darn excited :D
Last week I made a huge batch of my homemade veggie stock and used one part right away, froze three parts and saved one part in fridge for another soup.
So my first soup of the season was tomato, zuccini, and eggplant and fresh corn.  I was trying to use up the very last of my zuc and eggplant from the garden. I used a recipe from 300 sensational soups.
It was ok. Not thebest i'd ever made. the texture was a little wierd and as the kids loved to point out everytime i served myself a bowl, it looked like vomit... thanks :/
So I was super hyped to turn back to my fave soup ressource for soup recipes, the new england soup factory cookbook.  every soup ive tried form this book is amazing!
And today's was no disappointment.
I made the Tomato, Buttternut, Herb soup beacuse my mystery plant turned out to be ... butternut squash ;D.   i had apparantly saved seeds form a squash last year because i like them so much and given them to Christophe for this year. Neither of us remembered what those little seeds were but he planted them anyway. They quickly took over the back part of our garden and we figured it was pumpkin.  So mid-summer, we laughed when we found those little guys just laying there ripening in the sun :).
For this recipe, you start out sautéeing celery carrots onion garlic and butternut squash in butter. 

S0041340 Does that look delicious or what?!

When i do my vegan thing, i can usually make these soups work by just a few minor changes. Today, i didnt bother subbing the butter out for oil because i think the nutty, rich flavor of the butter was really a given.

For the butternut squash, i really hate trying to cut that thing! It's a major PITA and you loose a ton of the squash. So last night i threw the whole squash in the oven for about 45 minutes and then let it cool enough to throw it in fridge overnight.  This morning the skin just peeled right off , waisting barely anything!S0011336

And the knife just slides right through. S0021337
The seeds are also super easy to scoop out, unlike when it's raw. the chickens were so happy ;DS0031338

You're supposed to use canned tomatoes but no way! i have a ton of tomatoes in the garden still! So i threw them in boiling water to peel their skins off and then just tossed them in whole in the soup, added my veggie broth and some white wine and salt, pepper and basil and voilà...let it simmer :D!S0071343

When it's done cooking, i puréed the soup in the blender. Is that not a gorgeous fall color?!
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I tasted and it was good but just needed something! some kind of depth and i was trying to figure out what when i looked at the recipe again and doh!  vinegar!  so i added that and - perfection :D
It also called for cilantro but i didnt want that flavor profile today.

Well, come on over, soups on :D
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btw those cherry tomatos there? they are so flipin' good! taste like candy :D i eat as many while picking them as i manage to put in the bowl lol

Happy AUTUMN :D !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

3 comments:

Tini said...

wow, that looks yummy.
With butternut and hokkaido I don't bother trying to get the skin off. It's so soft when cooked, that I simply blend it in. So far, nobody (incl. the rockstars aka twins) has objected!

Rebecca said...

what is hokkaido? that is a good idea to just throw it all in lol. that said mine really just flaked on iff big pieces so it wasnt a hassle at all

Tiddy and Charlie. said...

Clever idea to roast the squash! I'm with you on the cherry tomatoes. 1 in the basket, 2 in the mouth :o) c x