Roasted Acorn Squash Soup with Fresh Parsley

It's been a fridge-cleaning kind of day, and since I found a few more acorn squash left over from last fall's farm deliveries, I decided to try my hand at acorn squash soup. Cooking from the top of my head–without a roadmap, so-to-speak–is always a bit more challenging. Frankly, though, how hard can it be to combine a few simple ingredients and turn them into soup? It's always fun to see what the outcome of a few more-or-less educated guesses on combining ingredients might be when I don't follow a recipe. So, here are the steps I took today and, may I say, the soup ended up being very tasty.

Roasted Acorn Squash Soup with Fresh Parsley

Ingredients:

approximately 4 cups roasted acorn squash

2-3 Tbsp. olive oil

2 cups diced sweet onions

1/4 tsp. dried thyme

4 cups chicken stock (or vegetable broth for a vegetarian version)

1/2 cup fresh, minced Italian parsley

salt & pepper to taste

Preparation:

To roast the squash, preheat oven to 400˚F, cut squash in half length-wise, scrape out seeds, brush the outside with olive oil and place on a lightly oiled baking sheet, cut side down. Bake at 400˚F for about 30-45 minutes, until the squash is soft. Let cool and scrape the flesh out of the skins.

In a large deep sauté pan or Dutch oven, heat olive oil and sauté onions and thyme until the onions are translucent. Add the squash and chicken stock and mix well. Heat over medium-low heat for about 20-25 minutes. Add about 1 to 1 1/2 tsp. sea salt and pepper to taste. Turn off the heat and add the fresh parsley. Mix everything well. Take about half of the mixture and purée in a blender until smooth. Mix with the remainder of the soup and serve. Number of servings: about six.