Creamy Butternut Squash Soup

1 butternut squash
1 large apple
1.25 TB butter
1 large shallot
.7lbs mushrooms
2.5 cups chicken stock
.66 cups half and half
1 TB olive oil
4 TB boiled cider
sprigs of sage to taste
salt and pepper to taste

So - prepare for a ramblethon. I'm just not very good at super-specific recipes. There are allows variations and this one has room for a lot!

Note: all oil/butter amounts seen here were used "as needed." I ended up using more than I intended because I took forever making this and my pan kept drying out. You may be able to use less and save yourself some fat calories!

I started by quartering a butternut squash the long way. I did not peel it because peeling squash is hard, man. After squashy was seeded and all I lightly rubbed it with olive oild, and then salt and peppered it. This ended up using about 1 tsp of the olive oil alloted in the recipe.

I roasted that at 400 for 40 minutes total, though probably could have pulled it a few minutes earlier.
Pull squash and allow to cool. It's okay if it's still a little hard at this point - it's roasting for flavor and will cook more later.

While that cooled I minced most of a shallot and about five mushrooms. The shallots went into a heavy bottomed pot, with a little bit of butter and then browned a bit. I then the minced mushrooms and added those to the pot. This all browned and browned.

While that was browning I peeled and minced a large sweet/crisp apple. I weighed it at 5oz before throwing it into the pot.

While I was chopping this apple the pan dried a bit, and at that point I added 1tsp of olive oil.

As the apple softened I removed the skin from the squash, cut it into chunks and added it to the pot with the other ingredients. The weight of the roasted and peeled squash was 21oz.

This all got stirred around until it became clear to me that stuff was going to burn and trying to soften anything further was pointless without liquid.

So I added 2.5 cups of chicken stock. I brought this to a boil for a few minutes, and then smooshed it all around with a potato smasher until it was a less chunky slurry of soup.

I then reduced it to low-medium while I wandered off and forgot about it - about 40 minutes.

It didn't burn, but it did reduce quite a lot. I'm not telling you to let yours reduce so much, I'm just saying mine did.

I dumped all of this into a blender and blended until smooth. I' don't like chunkies so I returned it to the pot through a sieve. You don't have to do this, but it does make it much smoother.

I set the pot aside and heated a small skillet while I minced some sage leaves. I added a small dot of butter to the pan and added the leaves to brown.

Once the leaves had browned I added in 2 TB of the boiled cider, stirred things around for a couple seconds and removed from heat. I poored the cider through a sieve into the soup.

This was all stirred around and then I tasted. I decided it could use a little more sweet so I added in two more TB of cider.

I added half-and-half by the 1/3 cup to taste. I stopped at a total of 2/3 cups.

I stirred this around, tasted, added a pinch of salt, and then poored off into a large measuring bowl. It came to exactly 4 cups.

I used the remainer of my butter allowance to brown the rest of the sliced mushrooms. I removed these and then, in the same pan, toasted some sage leaves.

To serve: Ladle 1 cup of soup into a bowl, add a few mushroom slices, and then top witha toasted leaf or two.

Note about Calorie Calculations:
****This recipe used 5oz of peeled diced apple by weight, and 21oz of roasted butternut squash by weight. You don't need these exact amounts, but remember to account for calorie calculatios if you're off by very much.
***** As mentioned above, my souple reduced quite a lot. I'd say that about half of the water from the chicken stock was boiled off. If you choose to not reduce as much then your FOUR servings will be greater than four cups. Likewise, if you keep the servings at exactly 1 cup you'll have more than 4 servings and the calorie count will be less.
***** In the same vein as above, if you don't reduce yours as much as then you may not want/need as much half-and-half. Account for that!
*****I really really think toasted pine-nuts would set this whole thing off. It still needs something texture wise.



Serving Size: This makes four 1cup servings

Number of Servings: 4

Recipe submitted by SparkPeople user FOR_EVER_UPHILL.