Autumn Warmer

On my early autumn walk the other day, I stumbled upon a patch of pumpkins, nestled in a bed of green, hiding away amongst their own foliage - what a lovely sight... I had to take a photograph:

This gorgeous pumpkiny goodness inspired me to combine two of my favourite things into a lovely delicious soup. I love butternut squash, I love it roasted and added to a goats cheese salad, I love it in stews, I love it on its own - I really do like it. I'm a vegetarian so my diet does focus quite disproportionately around vegies but yum yum yum! One of my other passions is Thai food - I absolutely adore it! So I decided to make a Thai butternut squash soup! It was a bit experimental so there are no set quantities of ingredients I'm afraid, but it is extremely easy to recreate. I obviously used butternut squash but you could just as easily use pumpkin (this should provide two hearty bowl fulls):

So take a large sized butternut squash, peel off the skin and scoop out the seeds from the centre, chop it into chunks then put it in a roasting tin. Take some nice unhealthy butter and spread it over the butternut squash pieces then sprinkle liberally with sea salt and put in a hot oven (c. 180 degrees) for about an hour or until the squash is tender...

Next, empty a can of coconut milk into a saucepan and add a teaspoon of Thai red curry paste and put the pan on a low heat. Add the roasted butternut squash a piece at a time - no need to include extra calories, so avoid adding any excess melted butter from the bottom of the pan. Warm the mixture for around five minutes to let all of the lovely spices from the paste infuse the milk. Remove from the heat and blitz with a bamix, or use a food processor to blend, until you have a lovely smooth thick soup. Return the soup to the pan and gently heat. Dilute with vegetable stock to your desired thickness (I think I used around 1/2 a pint). Heat thoroughly and then serve ... delicious!