Coconut-Spiked Squash Soup

This "elegant" butternut squash soup recipe comes from the awesome LCBO Food and Drink magazine (Holidays 2012). But if by "elegant" they mean ridiculously easy, well then, I agree! I chose this Coconut-Spiked Squash Soup recipe because I wanted to try out some of my new kitchen tools - my scale and immersion blender!

First up was weighing the ancient butternut squash I had lying around the kitchen floor. Good thing I had my trusty kitchen scale - turns out it was only about half the size as the recipe called for! Perhaps because it was on the wee side, or because it was so old the innards were a little shriveled. Either way I augmented the recipe with some turnips I had in the fridge.



In a large Dutch oven I melted 2 Tbsp butter, but also added 2 Tbsp olive oil - I find mixing the two works better. I threw in two chopped onions for about 5 minutes, then threw in the cubed/peeled/seeded butternut squash as well as three dicd turnips. The broth is made from one carton of chicken stock and one can of coconut milk (yummmm) so I added that and boiled it for about 20 minutes until everything was cooked.

So it's not the most complicated soup - no extra spices or anything. But it's rich and sweet. You can toast coconut flakes and sprinkle them on top for some texture and extra coconut flavour. And, if you're me, you can attempt to use your new immersion blender! It worked okay, I kept hitting the bottom of the pot and got a little worried, and there were still some big chunks left, but definitely easier than transferring hot soup to the blender and back. Less mess.