We first roasted the squash in the oven, adding some olive oil, salt and pepper into the whole squashes.
 |
| Carnival squash have seeds inside that look similar to a pumpkin. |
Saute the carrots, onions and celery in butter in a large pot. Add the potato and stock (we used chicken), and bring to a boil.
Here are the squash, roasting away! They look kind of puny in our oven, huh?
As the intended use of this recipe is a soup, it suggests scooping out the flesh of the squash, and using the outside for a bowl. Since we weren't making a soup, I cut off the rind, and used all the remaining pieces.
Toss that in the soup, and cook for a little longer.
I have heard great things about immersion blenders (I'm asking for one for Christmas - I think I'd get a good amount of use out of it), but since I don't have one -- we pureed the mixture in batches in the food processor.
Once back in the pot, add the cream, and season to your liking. At first we were a little concerned that it would be too bland to serve almost like a sauce underneath the chicken. Paul and I took small bowlfuls and tried mixing in different things -- I tried cumin, he tried rosemary candied walnuts, etc.
At this point, I realized that I hadn't added in the thyme listed in the recipe (I still can't figure out where you're supposed to add it). That helped a LOT. Once we let it rest and cool down (we made it the night before in case of disaster), the flavors became more strong and we weren't so worried about adding spices or other ingredients to jazz it up.
Here's how we served it -- reheated, under grilled chicken in herbs de provence and a little olive oil. The combo worked really well together -- the thyme in the chicken coating matched up with the soup/sauce.
Were we to make it again, but as a soup, I think I would add a dash more cream to make it even more like a bisque. You could also run the soup through a sieve if you don't want to have bits of pureed vegetables and thyme in the soup.
