Butternut

Butternut Soup

The first time in my life that I ate butternut soup was on my 21st birthday. I never had an end of school education celebration due to the fact that I didn’t finish school – this in itself is a story for another time. My mother decided to celebrate my 21ste birthday as a celebration of my life, which the enemy tried to rob many times. She decorated the house and bought me a beautiful dress and then she hired caterers for the evening. On the menu was butternut soup. It was absolutely delicious! So this soup is more a fond memory then just a recipe.

Ok I will come right out and say this, there are very few times that we follow the recipe exactly. Many times we just guess the amounts without weighing it out exactly.

What you need

5 kg butternut
4 x 200g Granny Smith apples
2 x 100g chopped onions
1 Cup of orange juice
2 packs of cream of chicken soup
2 l of milk
Salt and pepper
3 teaspoons of Curry powder
A half a teaspoon of chicken spice
250ml mayonnaise
250ml cream

We have found that butternut is a hard vegetable to peel and cut, so we prefer to wrap up the whole butternut in foil and roast it in the oven until it is soft. Once it has cooled down enough that we can handle it, we remove it from the foil and remove the skin and seeds and then mash it. We also feel this enhances the flavour instead of boiling cut pieces of butternut in water. You can do it either way you want.

Peel the apples and cut and core them. Peel and cut the onions into pieces and boil it together with the apples until it is very soft. Then drain off the water.

Like many of our adventures in the kitchen, Jacques does certain things while I do others. This way we work together seamlessly. Jacques blends together the butternut and some of the milk until it is nice and smooth. He then continues to blend the soft boiled apples, onions with the orange juice until it is a nice fine pulp texture. We often use a bit more orange juice than what the recipe calls for.

I heat the the rest of the milk, curry powder, chicken soup powder, salt and pepper together until everything is combined. As I said, we don’t really follow the precise recipe and most time we have more butternut than we should so we then add a liter or two of chicken stock as well. Then we add the butternut, apple, onion, orange juice pulp with the milk and spices.

Heat up everything together making sure that it is a nice smooth texture. We sometimes blend everything a bit more in the pot with a stick blender. Then we add the mayonnaise and cream into the soup, making sure everything is combined well.

Again presentation is key so we like to serve the soup with some dried pumpkin seeds on top of each bowl.

This recipe goes very well with some of our homemade breads.

Roasted Butternut and Glazed Nuts Salad

One of our favourite salads to make is a large leafy salad. We purchase different types and colour salad leaves and then you can basically do anything on top of it.

Of course one of our main goals when preparing a salad is to make it as beautiful as possible. We normally use a flat serving plate so that all the elements of the salad can be appreciated and all the guests can help themselves to all the different ingredients.

What you need for the salad

Different kinds and colour salad leaves
Butternut
Olive oil and spices for the roasting of the butternut
Walnuts or any nut of your choice
Butter and honey or syrup to glaze the nuts
Red onion
Feta cheese
Roasted sunflower and pumpkin seeds

What you need for the dressing

Honey
Mustard
Vinegar
Mayonnaise
Salt mixture of your choice

Peel and cut the butternut into pieces. Not too small as they do tend to reduce in size while roasting. This of course is Jacques’s job as I do not have enough strength in my arms to cut through the larger pieces of butternut

Coat the butternut with olive oil and any spices that you prefer. More oil is better, we aren’t deep frying it but we are also not shy with the oil. Salt is also important, you might get a nice color by adding paprika or cinnamon but if there is no or little salt the taste would be less pleasant that having just enough salt.

Spread them out in a single layer onto a baking dish and place them in the oven. Make sure to stir them around on the dish every now and again to allow an even roast. When they are soft but not mushy and have a nice brown colour remove them and allow to cool down.

In a pan melt butter and either honey or syrup. Add the nuts and stir until all the nuts are covered in the butter. Continue to stir around until the butter and syrup form a nice sticky coat over the nuts. It is better to work on a lower flame so that you do not burn the nuts. Once they are nice and sticky put them on a baking sheet and separate them as much as possible and allow to cool down.

Cut your red onions in nice thin slices.

Put the sunflower and pumpkin seeds into a pan over a low heat. Stir or even better if you can toss them around in the pan until you can smell them roasting – remove from the heat and allow to cool.

Now to pack the salad.

Here you can either do a single layer or a double layer of all the ingredients.

Take your serving dish and cover the base of the dish with your assortment of salad leaves.

Here you can be creative and pack the rest of the ingredients onto the salad leaves.

Normally we leave the feta and seeds for last.

Mix all the ingredients for the dressing together. Do not use too much vinegar, it is actually just there to allow your dressing to be a bit runny but not too runny for easier application.

Make sure that you taste your dressing before adding it to your salad.

We normally add the dressing just before serving it so that it doesn’t just run down the plate.

When adding the dressing it is important not to drown your salad.

With a salad the sky is the limit. You can add and take away according to your taste. The trick is in the presentation and making sure that all your ingredients are nice and fresh.

Butternut Soup

Roasted Butternut and Glazed Nuts Salad

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