Two Butternut Soup Recipes

Seeing as I have been desperately looking for an excuse to buy one of those hand held blenders since my old "normal" blender conked in... I decided to share two of my favourite butternut recipes with you. Both have a South African "ring" to them! It is enough to feed 6-8 people and preparation time is about 25 min. It takes about 30 min to cook.

First Recipe (Canned tomatoes added)

Ingredients:

1 Large onion
30ml cooking oil
5ml curry powder
5ml black mustard seeds
2ml fine cumin
1 garlic glove chopped
1kg butternut,cut in cubes
1.3l chicken stock
1 tin (410g) tomatoes
1 tin (410g) coconut milk
salt & freshly ground black pepper
fresh coriander leaves

Method:

Saute onion until soft,stir in the curry powder,mustard seeds,cumin and garlic
Add butternut and stir until covered all round with curry powder and oil.
Put the lid on the pot and decrease heat.Let the veggies "sweat" for 10-15 min.Stir every now and then.
Add the stock and then tomatoes and heat till boiling point.Lower the heat,put on the lid again and simmer for 30 min or until butternut is soft.
Mash or liquidise the soup till smooth. Now add coconut milk and and flavour with salt and pepper. Heat until heated through.Just before serving, add fresh coriander leaves. You can sprinkle some dukkah over the soup too if you like...Serve with fresh bread. A semi sweet white wine will go down nicely with this, since the soup is very flavourful, a fruity red wine should also do!

This is how they make butternut soup down in the Cape Province! My parents come from there and most of our family still lives there!
On my Mother's side of the family we are descendants of the Du Bios Huguenots from France.


Recipe 2 (Apple,orange juice,ginger,milk and cream version)

1kg butternut,cut in cubes
1 medium onion
1 heaped tsp curry powder
2 cm piece grated ginger
1 peeled and grated granny smith apple
500ml chicken or vegetable stock
1 liter of milk
250ml cream
125ml orange juice
zest of the orange
salt and pepper to taste
grated nutmeg
zest and juice of 1 lemon

Method

Saute the onion, garlic, ginger and apple with some oil. Add curry powder.
When translucent, add butternut and stock.
Close lid and cook until butternut is soft.Puree the soup.
Add milk and orange juice. If you have a lot of pumpkin puree, use all the milk, otherwise add until you have a smooth runny, soup.
Pour back into pot and add all seasoning, such as salt, pepper,orange zest and nutmeg.
Stir in 200ml of the cream, keep the rest for decoration