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Saturday, June 18, 2011

Butternut Squash Soup with Rice


I make a soup every week or so that is inspired not so much by a cookbook, but rather what we have in the refridgerator at the time--leftovers that aren't 'moving', purchases from the farmer's market that have started to wilt a bit, or things that have been in the freezer long enough that the new season for them is rolling around again.
During my moving process I have not been cooking regularly--but I have always taken my lunch to work. The last couple of months it has been my traditional salad, but rather than soup on the side, it has been an amalgamation of various take out leftovers. No more. The last two weeks, the soup side dish is back. Which doesn't mean that life has returned to normal, or even really settled down all that much (I still have paint on my forearms to try to conceal from co-workers on an almost daily basis still), but it does feel better to actually have food that is in danger of going bad before it is eaten once again.
So the first soup that my family likes to refer to as "what's going bad in the fridge" soup--or what I like to call "love it or hate it, you will never have it again" soup--went like this:
a quart of roasted butternut squash (dutifully roasted and frozen last fall)
a quart of stock (I used poultry--combination of chicken and turkey bones--but any stock would be fine)
a heaping tablespoon of paprika (I used regular, but I think smoked would have been great too)
a can of diced tomatoes
and a take out container of rice thrown in at the end (probably about a cup), when the stove had been turned off
salt and pepper to taste
I did not puree it, and it is delicious, in a hearty way.
The rice that is left over when the Asian food it goes with is gone becomes quite dry quite quickly. Usually I add a bit of stock to it and make fried rice--which is a great way to used it, because when it rehydrates with the stock it takes on that flavor as well, and with a bunch of vegetables and an egg stirred in at the end, fried rice becomes a meal, but throwing it into soup at the end of the cooking process and letting the soup warm and rehydrate is is another very good solution for how to make it delicious again.

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