Squash Soup

I read lots of soup recipes and have a couple of twists to make your soup life easier.

Firstly, use what ever sort of squash you can find at the market. I don't even know the names of all of the squash I used this time. There is a turban squash, something that looks like an acorn squash, but with a white flesh, zucchini, and some sort of yellow squash that looks like butternut, but with a different shape.

Secondly, cut the big seeded squash in half, take out the seeds and rub the inside with olive oil. Put these cut side down in a roasting pan. Add the quartered onions, garlic cloves, carrots, zucchini, celery ribs including the leaves and drizzle a bit of olive oil over the whole. Roast in a hot oven until the big squash is tender and the rest of the veggies are getting a nice brown color around the edges.

I used a frozen container of chicken stock with all of the fat skimmed off. You don't have to do this in advance. The fat will be frozen on top and you can just scrape it off. Easy.

Dump all of the roasted veggies except the big squash on top of the frozen lump of stock. Before you dump in the big squash, cut off the stem ends, but you don't have to peel the squash. This is a real time and energy saver.

With a slotted spoon take out all of the veggies (putting them on the frozen stock cooled the veggies quickly and melted the stock at the same time!) and put them in the blender. Blend until very smooth. Stringy squash will not be stringy; skins will not be a problem but will add some color and fiber.

It will be so smooth that added cream will not be necessary. Salt and pepper are really the only things necessary to spice it up, but if you have some other things you make want to play. Some recipes call for cinnamon and brown sugar. I think a bit of hot sauce would be nice, but then I do live in Louisiana and we do hot sauce with ice cream. It depends on what you like.

Many recipes call for a spoonful of sour cream on top, but what about plain yogurt instead?