As you may or may not know, I have been craving soup lately. Usually this means I am deathly ill, or about to be. That's what I thought it was, until I found myself still craving soup a week later - not sick at all. (Stressed, yes. Could that be it? Maybe.) I'm not a soup person at all, so this is really weird for me, but after wishing I could make soup for the whole week, I decided to go for it.
I spent the week looking at probably hundreds of soup recipes. I don't really know why I chose this one. It seemed like a good idea, mainly because I had both butternut squash and apples, the main ingredients. This Apple Squash Soup from the book Clean Food is a creamy, sweet pureed soup seasoned with nutmeg. I think it's delicious. I roasted the butternut squash seeds with olive oil, butter and sea salt and sprinkled them on top for a crunchy texture. One of the reasons I don't like soup is because I like to chew my food, so this helped me get through the bowl. (Actually, I'm eating it right now.)
The recipe calls for rice milk and coconut milk - much more of the former and just a bit of the latter. I think it may have been interesting to go with all coconut milk instead, though it would be higher in calories that way. I can't really taste either over the squash. I'd also be interested to try making this soup with apples that are more tart - I'm not sure what kind I used (our pick-your-own apples got mixed up very quickly) but I think they are on the milder side. The vegetable broth I used was a Rapunzel bouillon cube - I use half what they recommend, but I may try it according to the directions next time. The salt is important - I tasted the soup without it and it was really flat. By the time I was happy with it I had put in 3 big pinches of sea salt. I also ended up adding an additional 1/4 tsp of nutmeg on top of the 1/2 tsp called for in the recipe. The recipe made a little more than 2 quarts - enough extra for the small bowl that I ate.
I can't say whether I'll make this again. It's good, but there are tons of similar recipes out there. Before I make this again I'd like to try some other versions and other soups entirely. (Here's a version of this soup that sounds even better than the one I'm eating right now.)
