Monday, October 10, 2016

Paleo Split Pea Soup (Squash)



Here's an interesting recipe! Very minimal ingredients and get this.. it's a split pea soup without the split peas, so what does that make it? I'm calling it a Paleo split pea soup because I hear Paleos don't eat beans and this squash tastes like a bean!

Gotta admit when I saw this strange looking dark green wort covered squash in my pre-thanksgiving CSA basket I wasn't too enthusiastic. Still baby's gotta eat and a squash is a squash so I set out to roast that thing. First of all it's very hard to cut so be careful! Even just peeling it was a challenge and I had to cut small pieces and then remove the skin with a sharp paring knife.

I boiled some for baby in a small pot and the rest I roasted in the oven to see how it would turn out. The results were very interesting! It's a dry squash either way, but even more dry and "Flaky" ? I don't know how to describe it's texture... for the boiled one on the stove I needed to mash and add in a lot of the boiling stock back into it to create a smooth consistency. 
The baked one was rather odd, it had been tossed with a bit of oil and it just stuck to the pan and so no real roasting achieved. I tossed it into a pot and added water and cooked it further then mashed it up... the result was a soup! A one ingredient soup! 
I tasted and it was similar to a lentil or split pea soup, really similar.  I set out to flavour it and opted for a curry.

In a bit of oil I browned some onions until almost crispy and set aside. With the remaining oil I added a sprinkling of curry powder and then added the squash and blended, seasoning lightly with salt. A dash of chicken stock is nice too and voila! It's absolutely delicious, I tell you!

Who knew? These buttercup squashes are amazing! I can imagine it would make a fantastic "pumpkin" pie with it's dry texture, no extra sogginess.  I had to contact the farm to ask what the name was as I had no idea and they told me it's a buttercup variety called "Sweet Mama" so next time you see it do give it a try and let me know what you come up with!


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