Roasted Butternut Squash and Apple Soup

As most of you who have been reading my blog for a while will know, I like to follow recipes. I make little tweaks here and there to fit my own personal tastes or for convenience sake, but in general, I'm a stick to the rules kinda gal. I think of cooking like playing the piano. It can be a wonderful, creative outlet for some people (my husband being one of those talented beings), but you gotta learn how to read the music before you will ever be able to create songs of your own.

It's the same thing with cooking. You have to know the basics before you start tossing things together, or else you risk coming out with something so bad the dog won't even eat it. Most of the time, I'll let the professionals do the heavy lifting. Then I will happily take the credit for their hard work. :)

Last night though, I got this mad crazy idea to do my own soup recipe. I must have read like 6 recipes for soups that all had one ingredient in common - butternut squash - then I took what I liked from all of them, threw it in the pot and said a little prayer to the big guy. Let me tell you, I should be sure to play the lotto this week, cause Lady Luck seems to be paying me a visit! The soup was good! I mean really pretty darn tasty. I'm probably more shocked than anyone. Except for maybe Mom (she was the one I used to call when I couldn't figure out how to make scrambled eggs).

This soup blends together roasted butternut squash, apples, sage, chicken broth and Marsala wine. Nothing too fancy going on, and I stuck with classic combinations (like clinging to the pool wall when you are learning to swim). Oh, and this starts with bacon. How bad can something be when it starts with bacon?! If nothing else, having this soup come out so delicious felt like moving up from the Little Tikes Big Wheel to a pair of training wheels. Not quite to the big girl two-wheeler just yet, but I'm headed in the right direction!

Roasted Butternut Squash and Apple Soup

5-6 cups butternut squash, peeled and cubed (this was 2 small squash for me)

olive oil

salt and pepper

3-4 slices of bacon, chopped

1 yellow onion, chopped

1 garlic clove, chopped

4 sage leaves, or a whole sage sprig

2 apples, peeled, cored and chopped

4 cups low-sodium chicken broth

1/4 cup Marsala wine

1/4 cup heavy cream

• Preheat oven to 400℉.
• Place cubed squash on baking sheet and drizzle with olive oil. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and mix together.
• Roast squash for 40-50 minutes, then set aside.
• In a large pot over medium heat, cook bacon through, then set aside. Leave oil in pot.
• Add additional olive oil if necessary, then add onions and cook till translucent (8-10 minutes).
• Add garlic, sage, apples and squash and saute for a few minutes.
• Add broth and simmer over medium for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.
• Lower heat to low, add Marsala and cook for an additional 5 minutes.
• Remove sage leaves or sprig.
• Add salt and pepper.
• Take the soup off the heat, and puree using a immersion blender or by transferring soup in batches to a blender. (We like ours a little chunkier, so I left some pieces of apple. This worked well and the apples had that baked apple texture).
• Stir in cream.
• Top individual servings with bacon.