This months Recipes to Rival challenge was Squash Soup with Vanilla Crème Fraiche as seen on Bravo TV's Top Chef a season or so ago. I have never had Squash soup before but it has intrigued me so I was glad of the opportunity. This recipe was just a series of discoveries for me.The recipe as given is huge! and I do mean huge as one person put it 40 pounds of squash is a little much. I cut mine in 1/4th and used an acorn squash and 2/3rds of a pumpkin left over from the pumpkin Rendang (one of the perks of being a founder is I knew this challenge was coming.) I cheated a bit with the veggie broth, I started with canned and then personalized it. I was tempted to throw in some apple or pear peels but resisted, looking back I wish I had gone ahead.
The Mirepoix (had to look that one up on wikipedia) was fantastic, I kept coming up with other things I could use it for and wondering if I made a really big batch if I could freeze it. And the Miso was a revelation, there are definitely some possibilities there, glazed vegetable and I was thinking chicken (or turkey). Don't think I am quite ready for miso soup though.I thought it was really clever to use a sage leaf to add flavor to the roasted squash. When it was done it was lovely and fragrant and almost made me say to heck with the soup, almost. I did not have a ricer or a decent immersion blender so I used my food processor. It worked sorta, (there were still little carrot flecks) but definitely good enough. At this point I froze half of the 'soup'.
There was alot of variation in soup thickness. I tried to get somewhere between porridge and broth, and ended up with something that was almost to thick to really be soup. Instead of Crème Fraiche, I used Greek yogurt with honey and vanilla.
Temper's Take: I was disappointed. I am not sure if it was the veggy broth (not a big fan) the thickness, not being hot enough or me just really not being a fan of sour milk products. The whole time it was cooking I kept thinking bacon, and maybe some bacon crumbles or spiced nuts. I am letting it sit and trying it again, maybe I will thin it down a little more and add some more miso. We will see.
8 comments:
I think crumbled bacon on top would be a great addition. I love the little pattern you made with your yogurt.
Cheers!
sorry you were disappointed! :( at least you know now. the pictures still turned out very lovely.
I'm with you on the dissapointed part but my taste-tester thinks it might go well as a pie filling (thicker consistency)... wonder if that would work... Either way - the cream/yogurt decorating made it fun to play with! ;-)
You know, looking at everyone elses, I think I must of added too little squash or too much stock, because mine was thinner than everyone elses. And, I do wish I had added pear too!
Mine was a little thick too. It was more like a puree than a soup. I actually used it as a sub for frozen pureed butternut squash in a recipe!
Yours looks tasty though! Great job!
I think the bacon sounds like a good idea, even a veggie bacon. It just seemed a little off.
Bacon sounds so good with this soup. I made turkey soup last night and did another mirepoix with the miso and it was out of this world! Your soup looks delcious!
As I was reading your post I was thinking the soup you were looking for would be more like this recipe I made a while back. This one has bacon and apples and it is one of my favorites:
http://arcticgardenstudio.blogspot.com/2008/10/roasted-acorn-squash-and-garnet-yam.html
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