Roasted Butternut Squash Soup With Toasted Walnuts

This fragrant, luscious soup invites you to stay in rather than go out on achilly night. I like to serve it with a spinach salad topped with slicedroasted beets and feta cheese, and drizzled with an olive oil-lemonvinaigrette.

Ingredients:

1 butternut squash (about 2 lbs.), quartered lengthwise and seeded

2 carrots, peeled and halved horizontally (also halved vertically if very thick)

2 large yellow onions, peeled and quartered

Olive oil for brushing

1 medium whole garlic bulb

3 cups vegetable stock or chicken broth, divided

1 tbsp. olive oil

1 tsp. curry powder

¼ c. dry sherry

1 tbsp. light brown sugar (see Tip)

½ tsp. pepper, or to taste

2 tsp. minced fresh oregano, or ½ tsp. dried oregano leaves

1/8 tsp. dried cinnamon, or to taste

½ c. milk or half-and-half

Salt to taste

Garnish: (0ptional) Creme fraiche or sour cream, toasted chopped walnuts and/or coarsely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley

Preparation

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with aluminumfoil.

Place the squash segments, skin-side up, on the baking sheet. Surroundwith the onions and carrots. Brush all the vegetables lightly with oliveoil. Gently remove the loose, excess papery skin from the garlic bulb.Trim off the top stem and about ¼ to ½ inch of the garlic head, exposingthe cloves but leaving them intact; brush lightly with olive oil. Wrap thegarlic in aluminum foil and place on the baking sheet.

Roast the vegetables in the center of the oven for about 40 minutes, oruntil they are very tender. Set aside until the squash and garlic are coolenough to handle. Remove the outer layer of the onion if it is dry

Squeeze half the garlic cloves out of their skins into a blender. Scrapethe flesh from half the squash and add it to the blender along with half ofthe onions and carrots. Add about 1 cup of the vegetable stock and puréeuntil smooth; repeat.

Heat the oil in a Dutch oven over medium heat. Add the curry powder;stir for about 30 seconds. Pour the soup into the pan. Stir in theremaining 1 cup stock, sherry, brown sugar, pepper, oregano, and cinnamon.Cover and simmer, stirring occasionally, for about 10 minutes. Add the milkand stir until heated through. Taste and adjust the seasoning.

YIELD: 5 cups, four to six servings

Advance Preparation

This soup will keep for up to 3 days in a covered container in therefrigerator. When reheating, stir in vegetable stock, water, or milk tothin as desired.

Paulette Mitchell, a culinary instructor, television personality, spokesperson, freelance food writer, and the award-winning author of 13 cookbooks, is known internationally for her quick-to-prepare recipes with gourmet flair. Paulette's most recently published cookbook is "The Complete 15-Minute Gourmet: Creative Cuisine Made Fast and Fresh." She is also the author of "A Beautiful Bowl of Soup" and "The Spirited Vegetarian," which was voted "Best Book in the World on Cooking with Wine" at the 2005 Gourmand World Media Awards. Paulette says that international travel is her favorite source of culinary inspiration.