Spicey squash soup with chile oil swirl
The recipe for this soup (from the Splendid Table’s emailed newsletter) says to top the soup, which already has chiles, tomatoes, chicken broth and the squash in it, with chopped jalapenos, garlic, cilantro, and lime. Their description:
A nice twist on the perennial autumn Butternut squash soup, there’s a jockeying of tart, savory, hot and sweet with the squash, tomatoes, vinegar, garlic and chile.
We ate it like this on Thursday, with the chopped topping on top of blobs of sour cream – the soup was thin enough that it all sank, but tasted good anyways. Last night I decided to thicken the soup a bit – it was easy to skim off a little cold liquid and mix it with flour, and whisk it back into the heating soup – and then buzz up the leftover chopped jalapenos, garlic, cilantro, and lime with some arugula & oil to make a smoother topping. It was supposed to be a little like this green goo for hummus topping from 101 Cookbooks; I was quite pleased with myself that I figured out I could use argula, that I had in the fridge, as a herbal substitute for parsley, that I would have had to buy. It still sank, but it still tasted good, and now I have extra green goo for topping hummus, too.
