Hi folks! I keep saying that I’m working on my cookbook, and indeed it’s still being formatted and edited by my tech guy. I hope to have it out well before Christmas, or even Thanksgiving. Maybe I’ll do a little series before TG of my favorite recipes for that holiday. Are people getting together this year? We’re having our usual fairly small family gathering, probably no more than a dozen people, so that should be okay as far as health guidelines are concerned.
But for today I want to share a recipe from this past Saturday, when I was in charge of the mid-morning snack and the lunch at a women’s retreat at our church. We had only 25 attendees, partly because of last-minute cancellations and partly because, I’m sure, of COVID. But the ones who were there were very enthusiastic, and I enjoyed serving them. I’m going to share a soup recipe with you today and my new roll recipe later on this week. Both are wonderful fall items that you may find useful this month. Let me take you through my thought process in coming up with the menu.
First I thought of just having one type of soup, the curried squash soup that I’m giving you today. This recipe had some real advantages: it was vegan, but delicious and hearty, with some nice possibilities for garnishes. I couldn’t imagine that anyone would be unable to eat it. With some hearty salads and good bread we’d have a balanced meal that wouldn’t be too heavy but should be satisfying. I ordered some roasted pumpkin-seed oil online to use as a decorative drizzle and planned to roast some pumpkin seeds as an additional garnish. The end result was going to be something similar to the illustration for this post (which is a stock image), with perhaps some extra cumin sprinkled over the top. Lovely! But how would I do this for a buffet line of around 35 people, the original count I was given? I envisioned a sort of assembly line, with one person dipping up the soup and another person adding the garnishes. But were we going to ask each person what she wanted? Would we have to explain the items? It started to sound a little too complicated.
At one point I thought about adding chicken, perhaps as an option, and that idea led to my decision to have a second soup: white chicken chili. With that added complication there was no way we could do individual garnishes. So I decided that I’d put them out on the counter with a sign directing people to add their own choices. We’d serve the soup from my faithful chafing dishes, thus fulfilling one of my strongest opinions about serving food: hot food has to be hot. So that’s what we did, with a helper dipping up servings and people adding their own toppings. We had some smaller soup cups that ended up coming in very handy, as some people wanted just a small serving and some people wanted a serving of each. I figured that the slightly spicy chicken chili would be the most popular, but the squash soup carried the day. I was particularly pleased with a comment made by a teenager from South Africa; she said “This soup reminds me of African food.”
I bought some acorn squash and some canned pumpkin, and then realized that I had a couple of Ziploc bags of pumpkin and of roasted butternut squash in the freezer that I could also use. So I ended up making the soup with those three types of squash, which may have added to the complexity of the taste. Let’s be honest, though: all squash is pretty bland! If I had to make this recipe again, especially if I were trying to get it together quickly, I’d just go with the canned pumpkin.
This ended up being so thrown together at the last minute that I hesitate to give any kind of hard-and-fast recipe. Instead, I’m giving you a list of ingredients below for you to use as a guideline.
CURRIED SQUASH-COCONUT SOUP
Yield: For each batch of the basic mix below, about seven 6-oz. servings (which aren’t very big, but this soup is pretty filling especially with the garnishes)
Basic Mix:
1 – 28-oz. can pumpkin puree (plain pumpkin, not pumpkin pie filling) or equivalent amount of roasted, puréed acorn or butternut squash
1 – 14-oz. can coconut milk
1 tablespoon red Thai chili paste
1 tablespoon vegetable broth base (“Better than Bouillon”)
1-2 tablespoons finely-grated fresh ginger
Mix together and heat, making sure that the chili paste and bouillon base are fully dissolved and incorporated. Taste and add more chili paste or broth base if you think spice/saltiness levels need adjusting. Add water if you think the soup is too thick and additional salt to taste if needed..
Optional Additions/Adjustments:
Add some regular curry powder or some other powdered spice mix that you have on hand. I have something called “Tandoori Spice” that’s a little spicier than regular curry powder, but anything in that family of spices is fine. Add 1/2 teaspoon at a time, tasting as you go.
You can also sauté and add half of a finely-chopped onion and/or a clove of garlic, pressed. I was pressed (ha) for time and didn’t do this, but I think I’d do it when I make it again. Or you could just add a tablespoon of dried onion flakes if you’d like. If you do add the onion and you want your soup to be completely smooth, you’ll need to use an immersion blender to do that, but some little chunks of onion won’t come amiss.
Possible Garnishes:
Roasted pumpkin seeds—buy the shelled raw ones in the bulk foods aisle at a natural foods grocery store or online; roast with neutral-flavored oil, salt and cumin or curry powder in a 4000 oven for about 5 minutes, or until you can smell them. (If by any chance you decided to use your own cooked pumpkin, please ignore those recipes that say you can roast the seeds from it and use them. Unless you’ve gotten a “Lady Godiva” pumpkin, which has “naked” seeds that don’t have hulls, your poor guests would have to shell their own seeds.)
Croutons: Homemade or store-bought. If you make your own, be sure to add some cumin or curry powder to them.
Roasted pumpkin-seed oil: To drizzle over the top. This is a fairly expensive item and quite strongly flavored. The only version I saw online comes in a small bottle with a nice pour spout. It looks very pretty!