Challenge One, Round One - Butternut Squash

Butternut squash is not for those who question the virtue of patience. It's not complicated but the nature of the squash does make working with it time consuming. In other words, it's a vegetable you could still respect the morning after. Those wiser often turn to considerably faster recipes and simply halve, seed, and roast the darn thing. I'm not known normally for being patient but in the kitchen a better self emerges. Here I rarely use words acceptable on Saturday nights but never on Sunday mornings, but always up for a test, I chose a more involved recipe.


Having a craving for both curry and butternut squash soup choosing a recipe that involved both was a no-brainer. The first I stumbled upon was from The Food Network's own Ellie Krieger, host of Healthy Appetite. Two butternut squash remained at the local market - gargantuan, and even larger. Ellie's Curried Butternut Squash Soup recipe called for one small butternut squash so I set about the task of splitting this guy in half verrrrry carefully. He's HUGE!


Several minutes later the giant gourd finally yielded and the seeds came out effortlessly. I've read that when simmered or roasted the skin becomes as tender as the squash itself and is reminiscient of a potato skin but I wasn't feeling particularly faithful last night and decided to remove it. Finally The Hulk was ready to be chopped into small cubes. Butternut squash is tough to cut through but does have some give and eventually the prep work was done. I would suggest starting the prep work about thirty minutes before needing to cook.


Once the dish had simmered I set about pureeing it in my favorite new plaything (aka the food processor). I had no interest in letting the dish cool off prior to pureeing but somehow avoided any major damage to person, machine, or more importantly recipe. Once pureed I served up a dish to The Beanpole with a dash of non-fat Greek yogurt and waited for the official verdict. The yogurt was too tangy for him so I ended up with the final say. I think this dish could have been a little better in a couple of ways. The soup ended up being more like a mush due to the gigantic squash. Even half exceeded a small squash. I'd also pay closer attention to the amount of curry used and NOT use my hand to measure this out. The apartment now smells and tastes like curry! It's worth another try though and with some tweaking could be a delicious accompaniment to other dishes but doesn't stand up well as the main course.