Ann Ferro: Family recipes

Food is so mired in culture and experience. It has meaning far beyond simply fueling our bodies.
My husband will often tell you that his mother woke him up on Sunday mornings by brandishing a meatball under his nose. I believe him. Meatballs were an important food in his house, a foodstuff that meant home and safety, love and “Get up, it’s time to go to church”. It’s been more than 55 years since that brandishing, yet its memory still evokes considerable power.
In our house no one waived anything under our noses. There were too many noses to worry about and it is hard to wave chicken fricassee under a nose. I say that because chicken fricassee was my mother’s tour de force when it came to favorite foods. Her chicken fricassee was delicious, even memorable.
Mom hated, hated, and I can’t emphasize this enough, despised onions and anything that lived in the sea. This from a woman who was raised in a village near the Cornish coast in England. She actually sent food back in restaurants, food that she said was tainted by being prepared on a cutting board where onions were cut.
For some reason she overcame this revulsion to make a meatloaf that called for two onions, a recipe that my father found on the back of a matchbook cover and, being of the Roman Catholic persuasion, fish was mandatory on Fridays. She cooked these things. She didn’t eat them.
Mom did not like squash. We were a squash-less house. We actually didn’t know that there was such a thing as squash until we were in our teens. I never tasted anything that was considered to be squash until well into my twenties.
My first foray into the world of squash gastronomy was a box of Bird’s Eye frozen sort. It was probably a winter variety but I am no expert on the squash family. That there were so many kinds of squash, I was totally ignorant. Zucchini? Wasn’t that a town somewhere near Naples?
Funny how family preferences follow you around.
Time passes and you grow and learn and I finally met an intact butternut squash. I wondered what to do with it. I had seen those cute packages of cut up butternut squash at various grocery stores, but had never really connected those bright orange cubes with the intimidating whole vegetable.
This was before the internet. So, I asked around. My local friends who had had personal acquaintances with squash looked at me as if I were seriously deficient.
“Peel it. Cut it in smaller pieces and cook it”, was the boiled down version of their advice. Sometimes there are dumb questions.
I learned quickly why supermarkets offer already cut up butternut squash at exorbitant prices.
Thriftily I persisted and acquiesced to the idea that preparation of a butternut squash was not easy or quick unless you were willing to risk bodily injury.
It was about ten years ago that I discovered that butternut squash makes delicious soup.
It was last year that I discovered that the seeds inside the butternut squash, when cleaned and toasted with a little olive oil, salt and pepper make a fantastic topping to that soup.
So, why this riff on butternut squash? Well, I made a pot of my special recipe butternut squash soup on Sunday from a rather small butternut squash and today, which is Wednesday, will be the first day that we don’t eat butternut squash soup for dinner.
I am sharing my recipe, such that it is, because it is delicious, thrifty and lasts a long time a culmination, if you will of my butternut squash journey:
Recipe for Ann Ferro’s Butternut Squash Soup: Sort of a general suggestion re the amounts. More or less of each as you like.
1 medium butternut squash cut into chunks. Save the seeds. I now look for one with a more bulbous end thinking that I will be able to harvest more seeds.
3 small sweet/crisp apples … (Empire is a good variety) cut up
1 large sweet onion cut up
1 Tablespoon poultry seasoning
3 Tablespoons dried parsley leaves Don’t use fresh.
Salt and pepper to taste
(Secret ingredient) 1 package Goya ham bouillon) you can get this where they sell Latino foods.
Chicken stock to cover the above ingredients.
Half and half
MAKING THE SOUP
Put all of the ingredients except the half and half into a large pot and bring to a boil. Turn down the heat and simmer away until the squash is tender. Turn off the heat and use an emersion blender to blend the vegetables into a smooth velvety soup. Correct the seasoning. Add as much half and half as you want. I never use more than half a cup. Stir to blend half and half into the soup
While the soup is cooking, clean and dry the seeds. Add both olive oil and butter to a frying pan and sauté the seeds, seasoned with salt and pepper until slightly browned. Be careful when you are frying the seeds. If the heat is too high, they will pop just like popcorn. You can roast them in the oven but that doesn’t seem like a good idea since you heat up the whole oven for so few seeds.
Serve your creamy butternut squash soup with a sprinkling of the seeds on top. I always offer cornbread or biscuits along with the soup, but some crusty Italian bread is good too.
Enjoy.
It can’t be used to wake you up on a Sunday morning, but on a frosty day, it’s just as memorable.