Butternut Apple Bisque

I love soup.  A lot.  If you've been a reader for a long time, it's pretty clear that soup is good year round, but I especially love it once fall hits.

We had a couple butternut squashes from our CSA, and some leftover canned pumpkin from making homemade Pumpkin Spice Lattes yesterday.  So today I decided to take a recipe I found and tweak it to suit us.  And because it turned out amazing, I'm sharing it here with all of you!  Some things are approximate, and be careful with the nutmeg...too much can be far too much of a good thing.

Butternut Squash and Apple Bisque

• 2 medium butternut squash
• 1/2 a medium yellow onion (could use white), diced
• 3 medium carrots (use the ones with green tops, they're the freshest), diced
• 2 Tbsp unsalted butter
• 1 garlic clove, thinly sliced
• 3-4 c. chicken stock (I used a container/box of chicken stock from Trader Joe)
• 1 1/2 c. water (I used this at the end because I found it to be too thick.  It still ended up nice and thick, but spoonable)
• 1 can canned pumpkin
• 2 apples (I used macintosh, but any that are semi-sweet/semi-tart would do), peeled and diced
• salt, pepper, and nutmeg to taste
• 1/2 c. heavy cream

First things first, pre-heat the oven to 400F.  Cut the squash lengthwise in 2, scrape the seeds out (save to roast later),  and rub the halves with melted butter.  Place flesh side down on a baking sheet and roast and roast for 30 minutes, checking to see if the flesh is soft.  Let cool and scrape out into a bowl.

In a soup pot (not a huge stock pot, but not a medium pot either), heat up the butter.  Once that's heated, add onions and cook until translucent.  Add diced carrots and garlic and cook until softened.  Add apples, pumpkin, squash, and stock and simmer until apples are soft, stirring often. (This can easily burn if it sticks to the bottom.)

I used an immersion blender, but you could also use a food processor or a regular blender (once it was cooled) to blend this until smooth.  Season to taste with salt, pepper and nutmeg, and then while blending add the 1/2 c. cream (I eyeballed it).

This turned out to be really, really good.  Good enough I'd serve it to guests in a heartbeat.

And for an amusing photo, have I mentioned that I use sterling demitasse spoons for baby spoons?  Nora loves them, they are the perfect size, and we already had them on hand!  Silver spoon and a china bowl of soup.  The good life indeed!