Cookbook Club – Sunday Suppers at Lucques

For our first cookbook of 2018, we used Sunday Suppers at Lucques by Suzanne Goin. I made the Kabocha Squash and Fennel Soup with Candied Pumpkin Seeds. You can see our entire Sunday supper on my Cookbook Club site. For now – my dish!

I am on a soup kick. It is winter after all, though in LA that mostly means temps in the 60’s. I still consider that chilly and a perfectly good reason to make a big, warming pot of soup. This Kabocha Squash and Fennel Soup sounded so good that I had to try it, even though I made a soup for last month’s Cookbook Club. I think I was also inspired because the last time I visited my parents, they made a delicious pumpkin soup that had really put me on to squash soups.

I cut the squash and fennel into wedges, tossed with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and roasted until tender and slightly caramelized.

I toasted fennel seeds in a pan, then pounded them coarsely in a mortar.

I melted butter in a large pot, then cooked the crushed fennel seeds, onion, thyme, chiles de arbol, a bay leaf, salt, and pepper until the onions turned soft and started to color.

I added the roasted squash and fennel. Then turned up the heat and poured in sherry, letting it reduce a couple minutes before adding chicken stock and salt.

After bringing to a boil and then simmering for 20 minutes, I used a colander to separate the solids from the broth.

In a blender on the lowest speed I blended 1/3 of the solids with half a cup of broth, then added another half cup of broth and blended at high speed, pouring in more liquid until the soup had the consistency of heavy cream. I poured the soup into a bowl, then repeated twice more for the remaining 2/3 of the solids.

While the soup was simmering, I melted butter into a pan, then toasted pumpkin seeds with sugar, cumin powder, cinnamon, paprika, cayenne, and salt.

I turned off the heat, waited 30 seconds, added honey, tossed to coat, and then spread the seeds on a plate to cool. As you can see, I let the pumpkin seeds get a little too toasty, but luckily they looked more burnt than they tasted. In fact, some people even said the candied pumpkin seeds were their favorite part of the dish!

I enjoyed the pumpkin seeds sprinkled on the soup. The recipe also called for adding a dollop of creme fraiche when serving, but I completely forgot. Nobody seemed to mind, and somebody even asked me if there was already cream in the soup.

This squash soup was very tasty, though I have to say that my parents’ squash soup had similar components and was just as good but much less complicated to make. I had already cheated by using cumin powder for the pumpkin seeds instead of toasting and grinding cumin as the recipe instructed. I think next time I’m in the mood for squash soup, I’ll make a simpler version but add the candied pumpkin seeds which were delish. Also this recipe made about double as much liquid as was needed – I ended up freezing all the extra liquid to make another batch of soup at a later date.