Nenaghgal Makes Butternut Squash Soup

I love making soup in the winter. It's simple, it's in-expensive and thankfully we all seem to like it. It's the perfect lunch with a sandwich or salad and then it lasts for several days so I can also take it to work.

I seldom measure my ingredients for soup but I'll give you the basic run through.

Start off with 1 butternut squash. Cut in half it and take out the seeds. Lay skin side down in a roasting pan (  I picked up this fantastic orange enamelled pan a few years ago for a photo shoot and I always love roasting my veggies in it as it looks so bright, colourful and happy)

Set the oven at 200 centigrade. Drizzle a little bit of olive oil and add salt and pepper on top.

Pop into the oven for approximately 30 minutes.

Since I had extra apples on hand - not cooking apples just some nice eating variety, I think these are Gala, I decided to add 3 or 4 apples into the soup as well. Peel them and core them and cut into chunks.

Here's the roasted squash out of the oven. It should be all soft and ready to scoop out into the pot.

Sauté one large yellow onion in about 1-2 tablespoons of olive oil.

Sauté until soft.

Scoop out the inside of the squash and add to the onions.

Add the apple chunks and continue sauteing for about 5 minutes.

Add chicken stock, now I seriously do not measure, I literally add a stock cube and then pour boiling water from the kettle until it reach about a quarter from the top. If I were to guess, I'd say it's about 3-4 cups of water.

Here are the skins of the squash after the insides have been taken out.

Let all the ingredients simmer away for about half an hour or so.

Whizz up with the hand blender. This has been the best tool I ever got for the kitchen as I used to ladle from the pot to a blender and back and forth - all those steps used to drive me crazy. Now a quick whizz with the hand blender and it's all done. Then I add 1 can of reduced fat coconut milk. Recently, I really love using coconut milk in my soups instead of condensed milk.

And voilà, it's all done- a bit more salt and pepper to taste and you are good to go.

I served mine in a mug with tomato and cheese quesadillas. Warming and filling for a rainy Saturday lunch.

I did the exact same soup using pumpkin instead of squash. Pumpkin has a wonderful flavour and I just took 1 small pumpkin, cut it in half, took out seeds, cut into chunks and took the skin off and then roasted it like the squash for 30 minutes, the rest of the steps are exactly the same. I think I might have added a bit of curry powder in to that one for a slight change.

Happy cooking and as always, I love to hear your comments or other soup suggestions.