Squash soup

The veg box and the veg plot have yielded us a few nice squashes recently, so I decided that  soup was in order. I'm rather suspicious of this soup as my impression of it is a bit watery and insipid; probably inspired by soup made with Halloween-type pumpkins. How wrong I have proved myself to be, and how glad I am I tried with a different variety.

I started with a Hubbard squash from the veg box - about 2lb in weight (but see note at end). I removed the top and scooped out all the seeds. (I wanted to serve the soup from the shell of the squash so didn't remove a lot of flesh, just scraped the inside a bit - leaving a shell about a centimetre and a half thick.)

Hollowed out Hubbard squash on the left, dwarfing the Honey Bear squash, left.

The flesh was added to a pan with some oil and a large diced onion, and the chopped flesh of a 'Honey Bear' squash, courtesy of the garden (about 8 oz).

The hollowed out pumpkin went into the oven and I periodically scraped more of the flesh out of it while I cooked it for the next 40 minutes or so, and added this to the mix cooking on the hob.

I added water, salt, about 10oz butter, a large handful of thyme to the soup and simmered for about half an hour until the  mix was thickening up and the squash was breaking down. I then added a can of tinned sweetcorn, heated the whole lot up and then blitzed with a blended to make it smooth.

Just before serving I added some small cubes of cheese and then poured it all into the hollowed out squash for serving

It was lovely served with a dollop of natural yogurt and some drops of chilli oil. The taste was so much richer, sweeter and better than I expected, and everyone (including the six year old) finished it up.

After serving there was still the shell of the squash left, so I scraped all the soup mix out, and ate it, and sliced up the remains of the shell and put it in the oven to soften a bit more - I'll use that to make another squash soup later in the week to take into work.