Winter Squash Soup with Red Onion Crisp is excerpted from Smitten Kitchen Keepers: New Classics for Your Forever Files by Deb Perelman. Copyright © 2022 by Deb Perelman. Excerpted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Winter Squash Soup with Red Onion Crisp
My extremely radical—although I’m not sure why it has to be—belief about being a person who cooks in a household full of people who are all picky but in different ways (this cook included) is that, as much as humanly (and humanely) possible, one should ignore the picky contingent and just make what you want. Wait, let me explain. I’ll start with the kids. I love them, but when they tell me they don’t like something, often what they mean is they just want something else for dinner (pizza, perhaps), or that they’re not hungry, which, of course, is not the same thing. Imagine missing out on a decade of something you loved to eat over such irrationalism! Now, let’s say it’s a spouse who decided they didn’t like, say, winter squash with coconut milk—but isn’t that just due to one bad cream-and-cinnamon squash soup years ago, a soup that tasted like pie?
What I am trying to say is that I made this spiced soup one fall day because it was the only thing I was craving, despite worrying that everyone was going to hate it, but also knowing that, some days, the only things I can rally to cook are the things I want to eat the most. And everyone finished it. These stories do not always end so well—sometimes they end with hastily assembled peanut butter sandwiches—but I will absolutely take the risk, because when it works we can increase the number of dishes everyone agrees on by a single, solitary recipe. Thank you for coming to my Deb Talk.
Serves 6
Ingredients
- 1 large or 2 small red onions
- Vegetable or another neutral oil
- 4 garlic cloves, thinly sliced, divided
- 1-inch piece ginger, peeled, thinly sliced
- 1 teaspoon ground cumin
- Red-pepper flakes, to taste
- Kosher salt
- 2 pounds (905 grams) peeled, seeded winter squash, in 1-inch cubes
- One 13.5-ounce (400-gram) can full-fat coconut milk, well shaken
- 2 cups (475 grams) vegetable broth, plus more as needed
- ¼ cup (15 grams) dried coconut flakes
- Lime juice, to taste
- Big handful of fresh cilantro or flat-leaf parsley, chopped
Directions
Prep your onions:
- Finely dice (into ¼-inch pieces) a total of ¼ cup onion, and set it aside. Thinly slice the rest.
Prepare the soup:
- Heat 2 tablespoons oil in a large pot over medium heat.
- Add the thinly sliced onion, three of the garlic cloves, all of the ginger and cumin, ¼ teaspoon red-pepper flakes (or adjust to taste), and 1 teaspoon kosher salt, and sauté until tender, about 8 to 10 minutes. Add the squash, and cook in the onion-spice mixture for 1 minute.
- Add the coconut milk and broth, and scrape up anything stuck to the bottom of the pot. Bring the soup to a simmer. Reduce heat to keep it simmering, cover the pot, and cook until the squash is very tender, about 20 minutes.
- Working in batches, purée the soup in a blender, or you can use an immersion blender to do it right in the pot. If the soup is very thick, you can thin it now with additional broth. Season with more salt to taste.
Make the topping:
- Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a small skillet over medium-high heat.
- Add the reserved diced red onion, the coconut flakes, and two pinches of red-pepper flakes, and cook, stirring almost the whole time, until the onion and coconut are a shade darker, about 4 to 5 minutes.
- Add the remaining garlic, and continue to cook until garlic, onion, and coconut are golden brown and crisp, about 2 minutes more.
- Season with salt, and scrape the crisp into a bowl.
- Ladle the soup into bowls, and finish each with a squeeze of lime juice, a spoonful of the red-onion crisp, and some cilantro.