I love this soup in the fall and winter months. It warms you through and through. I had been planning on making homemade fried chicken, buttermilk biscuits, and mashed potatoes but I was sick all weekend. This was the first day I was up for cooking anything so I decided a good soup might be the best thing for me.
ingredients:
1/2 stick butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 onion chopped
4 celery stalks chopped
4 carrots chopped
3 toes garlic chopped
3 large or 4 medium acorn squash
15 dried arbole chile pods or any small red dried Tai chile will work just as well
2 quarts chicken stock
Recipe:
Cut squash in half, cut of the ends so squash can sit upright once in half, and clean out the seeds and place on baking sheet. Put one pat of butter and one spoonful of brown sugar in each half and bake at 350 degrees for about an hour. Squash should be very tender and a little browned is okay too.
Meanwhile, in a good sized pot saute over medium heat the onion, garlic, celery and carrot in olive oil until soft, then add chicken stock and the chiles. Bring to a boil then reduce to simmer for about 30 min.
Remove chiles from stock and cut off stems of about 3-10 chiles (this depends on how hot you want it. I use about 10 because we like things caliente in this house). Put cleaned chiles back in stock/ veggie mix and discard the rest of the chiles.
I like to let the stock and the squash cool a bit before I start this next part but you can work with it hot too. With a metal spoon (or just use your hands to remove squash from skin) scoop the squash out of the skin straight into the stock/veggie mix. Once all the squash is in the stock go ahead and ladle it into the blender. Puree for about a minuet or until silky smooth. You will probably need to do 3-4 batches to get all the soup pureed. Pour soup back into pot, reheat, salt and pepper to taste, and garnish with sour cream. YUM! Warm bellies all around.
