Italian Squash Soup

 If life forced me to live with only one Italian cookbook it would be The Encyclopedia of Italian Cooking By Carla Capalbo. It’s not that I blindly follow her every recipe, it’s because her recipes are everyday food that my wife’s family used to cook. You will never see most of her recipes in so called Italian restaurants in America but her type of food was common in Italy.

The starting pointy for my Acorn Squash Soup was her Pumpkin Soup recipe but I am not fond of milk in soup so I left it out, I didn’t have any Pumpkin so I used an Acorn Squash, and I didn’t have any nutmeg so I left it out. I substituted gemelli for spaghetti because I like it better. As expected, my soup was Fantastic or I wouldn’t embarrass myself by publishing the recipe.

Ingredients:

1 Tablespoon butter

1 small onion diced

1 small acorn squash

1 can vegetable broth

handful gemelli

Salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

Tablespoon grated Parmesan sprinkled on top.

The butter and diced onion are placed in the coffepot and put on the hot plate. While the onion is being glazed, Peal and cube the acorn squash and get rid of the skin and seeds. The squash was added to the pot and stirred with the onions and butter. Then the broth was added.

After cooking a couple of hours, the squash was tender and it was removed from the pot with a slotted spoon.

  The squash was so tender, I used a hand potato masher to mash the squash and added it back to the pot. It made no sense to set up the blender for such a simple task. The salt was adjusted to taste (about ¼ tsp) and a handful of gemelli added. After ½ hour the gemelli was done and the pepper ground on top.

 This meal can be classified as vegetarian and if olive oil is substituted for the butter and you skip the Parmesan, it can be classified as vegan. Obviously, I am nether a vegan or a vegetarian but I do love fruits and vegetables so as I experiment with new and different portioned controlled meals, I would be a fool to skip a recipe just because it has no meat especially when its made with ingredients I enjoy. As we will see in the next post this recipe is easily adapted to include a portion of meat and other meat products.

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