Wednesday. 07/10/2015. 'Perfect Autumn Soup with Butternut Squash, Orange and fresh Ginger.'

This recipe comes from 'Gino's Veg Italia!' by Gino D'Acampo. Page 205.

This time I can not say the book pic looked great or appetising for there was none. It was just the ingredients which sounded excitingly appealing. 








Soups are great medium to bring seasonality into your plate. In this number, with us being in Autumn, it is all about Squashes and particularly the Butternut Squash. 

Squashes.

We love Butternut Squash so much so that we tried to grow them this year however with mixed results. Any plants started at home, grew quickly to then die after their second and third leaves. In desperation we tried to plant some straight outside, two of the common Butternut Squash and two called Coquina.  However it was mid May when we took that decision.  They thrived but then October arrived too soon and we had to harvest green Squashes who did not have time to perk up in sizes. Although they can get their colour by the window sill, I can only advise a sowing of those babies straight outdoors from March to give them plenty of daylight from the start. Well this is our plan for next year, having learnt the do and don't this year. 

Butternut Squash : 2015  trial.

the Prep.

So the ingredients which accompanied one entire Butternut Squash, were 3tbsp  of olive oil to fry 2 chopped red onions and 3tsp of fresh ginger, 1 Maris Piper potato, 1.2 litres of hot vegetable stock, 1 orange: the zest and 150ml of juice from it.  

Very Lazy Ginger.

Got to tell you a secret, I have been cheating with fresh Ginger for a while in my kitchen.  Each time I am buying fresh Ginger, I use a bit of it for a recipe and the rest get lost and wasted in no time at all after grating. So I did resort to use the little pot of wonder that is called 'Very Lazy Ginger'.  It comes into strips easily cut to your liking for any recipes and it last long. Like that, I always have Ginger at home ready to use and no more waste. Beside that Ginger is a fantastic ingredient to give a certain warmth to a dish.  It worked beautifully well in this soup. 

The great Autumn soup in the making.

The zest and juice of the Orange add that extra zing and flavour, which made the entire soup simply utterly delicious for it. Spoonfuls of Mascarpone Cheese finished of the soup, with a good pinch of cracked white pepper and 'Et voilà.' 


I actually made that meal less veggie for my partner by cooking some little cubes of Chorizo to add as yummy decoration on top of the soup. So it was not totally Veggie, but it still had the massive thumbs up anyhow for the spiced paprika sausage worked well with the other flavours, it was a home winner. 

The Result.

This little Autumn Soup got a five star from both of us and will make a come back at home for it was just delicious, just the right combination of ingredients. We loved the seasonality of it and do recommend strongly that tasty number.

Fougasse. 

We had the soup with a side of a gruyére 'fougasse' to share. A fougasse is a lovely type of French bread which is a firm favourite at home. The soup was an economical dish too as we had plenty left for lunch the following day. That is what we call a good all rounder.