Butternut squash - I Love you

Only the pure in heart can make a good soup.

Ludwig van Beethoven 

Okay so I've been home in Ireland a few months now and what I've really noticed is that our favorite meal time over here is lunch time, for one simple reason; Soup. Soup is probably the most consumed lunchtime meal by us Irish folk and for good reason. Its easy to make, ridiculously delicious and most importantly, healthy. (Back in the times of Famine, Soup Kitchens were what were able to keep a lot of our ancestors alive so it's quite the nourishing little dish! ) 


I'm going to go ahead and be completely immodest here and claim that I am a really really good soup maker. It's just a talent of mine to make really yummy soups! (I take after my mom!) And well while I always used to make a great Leek & Potato or a good ol' vegetable soup, it was this Christmas that an amazing ingredient presented itself, that I don't think I would ever want to live without again. 


Three delicious syllables ; Butter-nut-squash! How I didn't know about it before is beyond me but now that it's in my life I have been eating it non stop. My little sister Eve was watching a cooking show here by a famous chef Nigella Lawson and well she showed how to prepare a butternut squash and sweet potato soup. And thank God she did! We tasted it for the first time on Christmas Eve and I think we've made a batch of it every week since! It was phenomenal! Just so creamy and sweet and unlike any other soup I had tasted. I decided to look into this scrumptious autumn fruit (though you'd think it was a vegetable!) and find out what it's benefits are.


Apparently there are many;

• Rich in Phytonutrients and Antioxidants (anti-aging yay!)
• High in dietary Fibre
• Significant amounts of potassium which is great for bones
• Significant amounts of vitamin b6 which is needed for proper functioning of nervous and immune system
• the squash's orange color hints at its abundance of heart healthy carotenoids 
• the high levels of beta carotene which are converted to vitamin A in the body help protect against breast cancer and age related macular degeneration as well as aiding in healthy lung development in fetuses and newborns.
• high Vitamin C content

And there are more, this is only some of the benefits, not to mention just how amazing it tastes so it makes being healthy super easy i think! You can even bake the butternut squash and then when roasted scoop out the insides, mash them up with some seasoning and herbs and put them back in their skins and serve as your side dish with you dinner! delish! But for now here's the delicious soup recipe that made me fall in love. If anyone tries it, let me know how you like it too ;)

Roast squash and sweet potato soup with buttermilk blue cheese sauce

Ingredients

• 1 onion, roughly chopped
• 1 butternut squash, unpeeled, halved, seeds scraped out, sliced into 2.5cm/1in x 2.5cm/1in cubes
• 500g/1lb 2oz sweet potatoes, unpeeled, cut into 2.5cm/1in thick rings
• 60ml/2fl oz olive oil
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• ½ tsp ground nutmeg
• 1.5 litres/2 pints 13fl oz vegetable stock
• 125ml/4oz marsala wine
• salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the buttermilk cheese sauce

• 125g/4oz blue cheese, crumbled
• 250ml/9fl oz buttermilk
  
  

  Preparation method

  1. Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/Gas 6.
  2. Place the onion, chopped butternut squash and sweet potato onto a baking sheet. Drizzle with oil and sprinkle with the cinnamon and nutmeg. Roast in the oven for 45 minutes to an hour, or until tender.
  3. Allow the vegetables to cool slightly, then place half into a food processor and add 500ml/17fl oz of the vegetable stock. Blend to a purée and transfer to a large pan. Repeat with the remaining roasted vegetables and 500ml/17fl oz more of the stock - transfer the purée to the pan.
  4. Add the remaining 500ml/17fl oz of vegetable stock to the food processor and stir to catch any remnants of the vegetable purée, then pour into the pan.
  5. Add the marsala wine and season, to taste, with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Add a little more water if the soup is too thick for your liking.
  6. For the buttermilk cheese sauce, place the blue cheese and buttermilk into a clean food processor and blend to a paste. Transfer the blue cheese sauce to a jug or bowl.
  7. To serve, ladle the soup into bowls and drizzle some of the blue cheese into each bowl. Leave the sauce on the table for your guests to add more if they wish
     
     
     DEFINITELY ELAA APPROVED!!! :)