Cookbook Club – Raji Cuisine: Indian Flavors, French Passion

For our Cookbook Club in June, we used Raji Jallepalli’s Raji Cuisine: Indian Flavors, French Passion. To get a taste of all the Indian flavors with French influence, go to my Cookbook Club site. For now – my dish!

I enjoy eating butternut squash soup, but somehow I’ve managed to get this far in my life without ever making it myself. When I saw this recipe, I decided it was time to change that.

I pierced a butternut squash several times with a fork, rubbed it in canola oil and salt, and baked it at 450 degrees F until very tender (about 45 minutes).

Once the squash was cool, I removed the seeds and scraped the pulp from the skin into a blender, blending the squash pulp with 4 cups of water.

I then blended in curry powder, pepper, and salt.

I poured the soup into a pot and brought to a boil over medium-high heat. Then I lowered the heat and simmered for 5 minutes.

I’d never baked a butternut squash whole before, but it did make it easy to remove the seeds and scrape the squash out of the skin. I was a bit concerned that with 4 cups of water and only curry powder, pepper, and salt for seasoning it would be bland, but the soup had good flavor. I learned from my fellow Cookbook Clubbers that many butternut squash recipes use little more than squash and chicken or vegetable broth, so this actually had a lot more depth to it!