Soup Diary 150928

One of the most popular features on my old blog, Dr. John's Journal, was my soup diary which reported on my varied encounters with, well, soup.  When I started that feature, I was regularly dining at a couple of places that always had something new to try, and I was adventurous and figured it would make a nice writing exercise to try and say something clever or original about my discoveries.  I didn't carry it over to this blog mainly because those places changed chefs or something, and stopped being worth frequenting-- the soup, to put it bluntly, stopped being interesting enough to write about (big difference between something like African Peanut or Sweet Potato Poblano on one hand and Broccoli Cheddar on the other).  But, I've decided to revive the diary because I want to brag a bit about something I made over the weekend, and figure I may want to do so again periodically.

About a week ago, a friend gifted me a very large squash from their garden.  When I say large, I mean really large-- at least a foot long and about ten inches around.  It was a nice gesture, and I didn't want to appear ungrateful, so I accepted it even though I'm not a big fan of squash.  It sat on my counter for over a week while I considered what to do with it.  After awhile, I remembered a really good squash and apple soup I had enjoyed several years ago at the Old Hotel in Twin Bridges, MT-- one of the truly fine dining experiences in this region (I probably wrote about it on the old blog).  So I started looking up recipes in my various cookbooks, but couldn't find anything that seemed a perfect match, or for which I had all the necessary ingredients.  So I decided to improvise.  I roasted the squash, and while that was cooking I boiled a diced yam in chicken broth and sauteed some onions, red peppers, carrots and garlic in butter.  Almost all of the recipes called for ginger, but I don't really like ginger very much, so I replaced that with some cumin along with salt and pepper.  Eventually I combined everything in a big pot and let it stew for awhile, then blended it with a half cup of cream.  I had no idea how this would turn out-- not one of the recipes called for yams or red peppers, but I figured that those were things I liked, and it seemed like they'd fit with the other ingredients.  I'm pleased to report that the final result far surpassed my expectation, which is a really good thing, because that squash was really big (I may have mentioned that already) and I ended up with a lot of soup, which I'll now be enjoying for the next week or so.  In fact it turned out so well, that I'm planning to try some other concoctions, which seems a good reason to bring this diary back to life. I'll be sure to let you know how the next experiment turns out.