Roasted Butternut Squash and Orange Soup

It turned chilly again today so this was the perfect night to make some soup. I had been wanting to make Butternut Squash Soup for several weeks, but just hadn’t gotten around to it.  Originally, I had planned to make Butternut Squash and Apple Soup, but I used all of the apples that I picked on my apple picking excursion before I had the chance to make some soup.

Then I ran across this Butternut Squash and Orange Soup on Guvi’s blog. It sounded so refreshing and comforting with the addition of oranges and white wine that I decided to make this soup instead. I’ve never used butternut squash or oranges in soup before so this was a unique and tasty experience.

 

Butternut Squash and Orange Soup

The original recipe for this delicious soup can be found here:

Ingredients:

• Olive oil
• 2 medium onions, cut into cubes
• 2 carrots, peeled and cut in 1/2-inch pieces
• 2 ribs celery, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
• 3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• Salt and pepper
• 1 large butternut squash, roasted, peeled and cut into cubes
• 2 medium russet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1- inch cubes
• 2 cups white wine
• 2 quarts chicken broth
• Several sprigs of fresh thyme
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 orange, cut in half

 

Directions:

Roast the butternut squash in a preheated oven at 400F for about an hour. Let it cool completely, then cut in cubes.

 

Coat a large pot with olive oil and heat it over medium-high heat. Add the onions, carrots, celery and garlic and cook the vegetables until they start to soften, about 8 minutes. 

 

Add the squash and potatoes and season with salt and pepper, to taste. Stir to coat the mixture with the oil and cook for another 5 to 6 minutes.

 

Add the wine and reduce by half.

 

Add the chicken broth, thyme and bay leaves. Squeeze the orange into the soup and add both halves. Taste for seasoning and adjust, if needed. .

 

Bring the mixture to a boil and reduce to a simmer; cook until the squash, potatoes and carrots are soft, about 35 to 40 minutes. If the liquid level starts to get too low, water can be used to replace it

 

Remove and discard the orange halves, thyme sprigs and bay leaves and puree the soup with an immersion blender or a blender. If using a blender, cool the mixture for about 5 minutes and carefully add it to the blender. It should be very smooth and velvety. Check the consistency. If it is too thick add water to thin it. 

 

Ladle the soup into bowls and enjoy.  I added some freshly ground black pepper for garnish.  It didn’t need anything else.

 

Thanks for joining me in the bread-baking blog.  I hope you enjoy this soup.

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Spiced Pumpkin Soup

I had several containers of frozen roasted pumpkin puree from last Fall that I wanted to use before I roasted more this season.  This Spiced Pumpkin Soup was just the ticket I needed.

Pumpkin, sweet potato and nutmeg combine with savory ingredients for a deliciously warming spiced soup. This soup is great on a chilly Fall evening served with crusty bread, but it would also be perfect served with your Thanksgiving meal. 

Speaking of Thanksgiving, did you know?

“Native Americans were growing pumpkins for hundreds of years before Europeans first came to America. They grew them in mounds among their other crops. They used pumpkin chunks in stew and fed pumpkin pieces to their horses.”

Source: Pumpkin Lovers Cookbook. Golden West Publishers, Copyright © 2007.

Spiced Pumpkin Soup

Recipe from: She Knows Food & Recipes

You can find a slight variation of the recipe here

Ingredients:
1 tablespoon butter
1 cup onion, chopped
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon curry powder
1/4 teaspoon cumin
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 cup peeled and cubed sweet potato
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 14-ounce cans of nonfat and low-sodium chicken broth
1 15-ounce can of pumpkin (I used roasted pumpkin puree)
1 cup 1 percent milk
1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
Nonfat sour cream (optional)
Chopped cilantro for garnish (optional)

Directions:
Melt butter in a Dutch oven or large saucepan over medium-high heat. Sauté onion for 3 to 4 minutes, then add flour, curry, cumin and nutmeg; sauté for 1 minute.

Add sweet potato, salt, chicken broth and pumpkin and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer, partially covered for about 20 to 25 minutes or until sweet potatoes are cooked through and softened. Remove from heat and let stand for 10 minutes to cool.

Place half of the pumpkin mixture in a blender and process until smooth.

Using a strainer, pour soup back into pan. Repeat with rest of soup.  I started straining the soup, but then decided it didn’t need it.  I liked it thick so I just dumped all of it back in the pan without straining it.

Raise the heat to medium, then stir in milk and cook for 5 minutes or until soup is heated through. Remove from heat and add lime juice.

Serve with an optional dollop of nonfat sour cream and/or sprinkled with chopped cilantro. 

I topped the soup with parsley the first time I served it. We enjoyed a bowl of the Spiced Pumpkin Soup with these Tabbouleh Rolls with Parsley, Garlic and Bulger and a salad.

There was enough soup leftover for the next day so this time, I topped it with cilantro.  I didn’t have fresh so I just used dried cilantro. It tasted great!

Nutrition facts per serving (1/6 of recipe or 300 grams): 128 calories, 31 calories from fat, 3g fat, 2g saturated fat, 7mg cholesterol, 351mg sodium, 19g carbohydrates, 3g dietary fiber, 0g sugars, 6g protein, 405 percent Vitamin A, 15 percent vitamin C, 8 percent calcium, 8 percent iron

 

Thanks for joining me in the bread-baking blog.  I hope you enjoyed this soup and will join me again soon.

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Tabbouleh Bread with Parsley, Garlic and Bulgur

Heathy Bread in Five Minutes Tabbouleh Bread is one of the breads the HBinFive Bakers made for the November 1st Bread Braid.  I didn’t have time to make it for that bread braid so I saved it for the November 15th Bread Braid.

I’ve talked about the benefits of the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes and Healthy Bread in Five Minutes methods before, but I must say that this method really came in handy this weekend. I wanted to make this bread, but I had to work. I’m a project manager and this weekend, we implemented an Intranet project that I’ve been working on for the past four months. 

I was pretty stressed about this implementation because the days leading up to it were filled with mishaps that I could not control. On Wednesday, my phone lines went down. I thought great, I hope this doesn’t happen Friday night. Fortunately, they were back up in a couple of hours. The next day, the server went down at work.  Things were starting to get a little bit weird at this point, but it was only down for a short time so I didn’t worry about it.  Then, Friday afternoon, my electricity just went out.  Just like that.  No storms.  Just all of a sudden, no power.

The good thing about the electricity going out was that it gave me some downtime and I was able to mix up the Tabbouleh dough.  We implemented the project Friday night and worked out the bugs on Saturday. In between testing, I was able to bake the bread. So if you think you don’t have time to bake bread, them I’m here to prove you wrong because I managed to bake this bread even with my crazy schedule this weekend. 

As the title suggests, the dominant flavors in this bread are bulgur wheat, garlic, parsley, and lemon zest.  I used more garlic than the recipe called for and added a little more lemon zest.  Some of the other bakers had mentioned that this bread wasn’t as flavorful as they would’ve thought so I decided to up the ante a little bit.  I think it worked.  I liked the flavor.

I decided to bake this bread in my La Cloche.  I’ve baked other yeast breads in it but, I hadn’t tried a no knead bread.  To bake it, I just took one pound of dough out of the refrigerator and shaped it into a ball.  Then I placed the dough ball in the La Cloche sprinkled with cornmeal, covered it, and let it rise for about an hour and a half.

 

Then I scored the loaf in a pound pattern

 

And baked it in the preheated oven at 450 degrees.

 

I love the colors of this Tabbouleh Bread.  It’s golden brown with flecks of green and brown. 

 

It’s actually quite tasty as well.  The crust was nice and crunchy because of baking it in the La Cloche.  The inside was delicious as well. I ate some warm with butter. 

 

I made rolls with the remaining dough.

This bread has been YeastSpotted. Please visit Wild Yeast to view all of the lovely breads in the roundup.

We had the rolls with homemade Spiced Pumpkin Soup. I’ll be sharing that recipe in another post. 

My boyfriend said this one was a keeper.  He liked the rolls and the soup. So did I.

 

About the HBinFive Baking Group
The HBinFive Baking Group, started by Michelle of Big Black Dogs, is baking through all of the breads in the Healthy Bread in Five Minutes book. For more information on the HBinFive baking group, check out BigBlackDog.

 

Additional bread-making resources:

• Bread Recipes
• Bread Cookbooks
• Bread Making
• Baking Supplies
• Bread Flour
• Bread Mixes