Roasted Butternut Squash Soup

Michael Chiarello: We have three sets of couples that our friends that are all got engaged at the same time must be contagious here in the Napa Valley. To celebrate their engagements, we are going to throw them a little party and to start off with, I am going to do a little _____(0:16)Harlequin of two soups that are going to be wrapped together. Like a little couple of soups really beautiful, each with their own flavor.

To start off with, our little roasted butternut squash soup, obviously, for the guys. All right, so we have some butternut squash about a pound and a half that we have diced up in these some pieces. Now I love butternut squash soup and I love making it my way, which is brown butter, sage, spice; really beautiful, lots of flavor. I have about three quarters of a cup of butter, some sage. Since this is going to get pureed afterwards, it really does not matter if it is perfect or not. About three tablespoons of sage, perfect. Sage is one of my favorite herbs of all time. I do not think people use sage at home much and they really should. You know parsley gets all the glory I think but sage’s got all the flavor. Now for my toasted spice is really simple. You have heard me using this before, I have fennel, chili flake, coriander, cinnamon, black pepper, sea salt and chili powder; all of these get roasted together and then purred. It’s a beautiful spice combination for these squashes.

Okay, our butter is just about ready; third of a cup of balsamic vinegar, third of a cup of molasses. The Italian version, they have a fig molasses and also a great molasses called saba, kind of a cooked great mast that’s really, really super tasty. All that kind of melts together; the sage goes in, three tablespoons of sugar and this is that whole [Foreign Language] thing which is kind of sweet and sour, kind of a famous flavor combination in the old country. Now, the squash goes in. A couple of tablespoons to that toasted spice rub, a little salt and pepper.

Now, I am doing something like this, I am going to put in the oven. I always try to get it up to temperature on the stove. It only takes a minute on this stove to come up to a boil but it take like 20 minutes in the oven to do the same thing. So we just give it about 45 seconds here right on a sheet pan and in a hot oven.

Now we are going to spread this out a little bit, if I put the pan on the oven by themselves, the one in the middle there would not get brown at all. So we do not want this to get too brown. We want them just to get light brown and really soft and this is going to be the base for our soup. Now here is our squash is going in 400 degree oven for about 45 minutes to an hour just until you put a knife in there and they’re super tender.

There are our carrots and a cup of onions and a half a cup of celery and a half a cup of carrots on top of that. That is our traditional mixture of [Foreign Language]. Okay, four tablespoons of olive oil go in our pan. So we are going to get these vegetables soft and tender. A little pinch of salt goes in there, two cinnamon sticks just to add a really nice flavor with that roasted butternut squash remember. It’s kind of gives you that pumpkin soup like flavor in there. Those will sauté and cinnamon sticks come out. They have done their business. Now I have eight cups of chicken broth that I have also brought up to a boil. That is going to go right on top of our vegetables. Beautiful, a little bit of pepper in here and now we are going to add in the roasted butternut squash that i have already pulled out in the oven and look delicious. Now as the vegetable by itself sometimes I’ll just roast them up like that and just serve them or maybe just fork mash them a little bit, they’re fantastic. Rabiole mixture in sandwiches with a little more [Foreign Language], I love the butternut squash.

That is perfect just like that. See that, the squash is tender, everything is beautiful. All we are going to do is blend all this together. So, a little bit half-and-half right in, perfect, back into the blender. I love this soup.