Acorn Squash Soup

Chef John Guinivere

Acorn Squash Soup

Okay now we’re going to our Acorn Squash Soup or potage. Okay we’re going to start of with a little bit of oil, we’re just going to use the oil for caramelizing our onions, and I start of most of my soups with the same basic ingredients. I always do either a Italian or something close. Oregano, thyme whichever and I always use garlic and I always sauté some onions and I always cook it off with some alcohol.

Now, red onions, white onions whichever onions you want, which combination of a thyme seasoning or all of it and that’s really up to you guys. But it gives you a nice flavor for the soup to start with, that’s just always worked for me so I’ve always done it. But there maybe some exceptions you may not want to use that mixture, you know it’s not really an Asian flavor so if you’re doing a wanton soup something like that, it may not be what you want. And you know a lot people go this direction and I sort of know this thing about and they have layers here and you don’t need to do this direction.

It’s so that cuts down the time of your cut your onions so you cry less. The size of your onions doesn’t super matter on this you can do it in our French or pretty you know about certain things so if they did a potage they’re going to run it through a sieve or a chinoise because they don’t want any lumps of anything. Myself, I guess we’re time consuming and when these start time consuming and I don’t mind chunks of onion in my soup, it just doesn’t bother me so, it’s really personal preference, the soups like it tasting it better because you run through a chinoise, it’s just not going to do it.

This looks sort of weird to keep our garlic in a bag but this is a sort of technique of mine, I put the bulb in there and I crush it so as in the back and I could crushing it. In that way you don’t have your garlic paper everywhere and you can—if you pushed down on the garlic hard enough you can actually get it to crack so I’ll show you. The skin is pretty tight on that if you just—like that, you see the garlic skin pulls right off. And one technique you can use for mincing garlic is the back of your knife or another way is you go and set the knife right on it, smash it like that and then do a little bit more chopping and you get—

That’s the part where I usually add the alcohol, this is the flan bake because I’ve got a pre where I can try, but, okay you flan bake. These are all my eyebrows. Now, if you’re going to use a lot of alcohol, you know like a lot of wine like you’re doing the all wine sauce, so you take in that much wine and making it that much wine, you want and making a that much wine you want a pretty good wine. Because this can make a difference because any of the bitter flavors to make a wine not so good or it going to be more pronounced because you’ve done a reduction in the flavor.

So I go some whole time, let’s get really fresh herbs and some dried oregano, I mean freshly dried. I mean I don’t know the fresh, fresh but. So I turned that down and the squash, like I said I milked them until they’re soft and you can do ahead of time so that when you have to handle them their got too hot to handle. This—but it was 14 minutes for two, full blast. My favorite with acorn squash is brown sugar and butter, broiled have you cooked, you have to get them nice and soft, as just a great dish in my opinion. Before I don’t know what to do with squash, but they’re a good vegetable to play with.

When I use soups, I use my bouillon as my salt and—so don’t use salt use bouillon, the reason you going to do that is you get two things, you get the saltiness of course and then you get the body, that extra flavor that the chicken base has. Now, I’m going to do a little bit of milk because if I use cream which I’m going to add some cream to finish it off, if I use cream I wouldn’t really get to blend I real easily with the hand blender.

And if any of you guys bought one of these at three in the morning on the infomercial, now you have some to do with it. I could turn the flame of as well. Not because this has got a problem with heat, just because this is all the heat coming up on my arm and burning me. Now, I threw enough milk in there and I did it quick enough that the heat and the squash wasn’t real hot either. So, if the squash had been hot I might break it and I’m going to—it’s got sort of like cottage cheese and the second when I bring this temperature, I’m going to add in some fresh cream or we’re going to temper it first and I will show what that means.

Now, this is the point where we—I would put here the chinoise but I’m not French. Although I’m French strains, there’s a difference. I’m just going to bring that up to a—just bring up the temperature on that and then I going to do some of my garlic bread. Now, from my—I’ve got a little bit of clarified butter here and clarified butter a.k.a. gee is melted butter. The solid is good on the top, that’s that white stuff and then the water is there, goes to the bottom. And what that does if you use clarified butter versus just regular butter, has a higher burning temperature because the solids aren’t there to heat up and brown the butter.

For, I made clarified butter because we’re going to do another dish that requires clarified butter but since it was handy that’s fine.

Male: When you’re doing clarify your butter do you skin it as you’re—

Chef: Usually, you can just melt it and bringing up the heat, let it melt and then add—and then as it cools down you have everything would be on the top, it just takes a minute, you don’t need all sorts.

You do baklava, is it pistachios or walnuts, a little more tainted in there. Our mom use to make a lot of it. When I first came to Vegas I tried to play with the way thought Philo and the humidity was 6% and I think you came out the packaging went—just right there on the spot, yes. You have to use a humidifier pretty much to do anything with Philo.

To grandmas—one big garlic and this may seem like a pretty simple recipe for garlic bread but, I don’t know why everybody seems to like it so I always do it. And a little paprika, paprika almost more of a color than anything else which looks nice. And a little bit more of butter in there.

One trick ,if you buy some bread and some comes up and you don’t use it, throw it in a Ziploc, throw it in the freezer, that day. And then when you need it, take the bread out of the freezer, run under cold water stick the whole blow from running a cold water and thrown a 375 degree oven and it will be just as good as the minute it came out of the oven. And yes, works perfectly.

Well how many times do you buy fresh bread and you don’t—and usually people leave it on the counter which is the worst thing because that’s why they sell bread the next day for half price because it’s—the quality just it goes the way down.

A friend of mine when I went to culinary school with ended up as the baker at what you call it—it’s over there in Caesar’s, Spago and she made incredible bread and she would always bring me more bread than I can eat. Which I can eat a lot of what she brought, usually a loaf because it was just such great bread and it was hot, when she delivered some to my house. And I said, you always bring too much bread and she said well, throw it in the freezer and then when you want to use it, run it in cold water and throw it on the oven, that will be great.

Male: You can use purified water when you—

I’m not much of a baker, if a measuring cup is involved, it probably is not a recipe I’m going to attempt. And baking and desserts are really—they’re more for chemists, right. No offense if you’re—

Yeah I mean there’s definitely, there is—if you’re really into making breads and making pastries you know which flour you use all those things become very important to people or you are into that level. Myself, I don’t know much about it so it’s even hard for me to talk about it, to be honest with you what’s—I know they say that the bagels in New York are so much better because of the water. So I mean, I assume that’s true and the pizza dough is better they say as well, so it’s—could you get me a mix bowl about that big, it can be glass.
Now, what I’m going to do right now before I for my cream in, I’m going to temper this. And tampering is exactly that. You’re going to temper the cream that you going to make it slowly warm so that when we pour back in, there’s no way to break, that’s the idea behind it. So you add your cream in here and you take a little of those soup and just mix it in there, take a little bit more.

So by the way in this, when we throw it in, the cream is already warm and it’s not going to break on us. And another thing is, when you throw it in there just give a really good stir and we’ll bring it up the temperature. And actually, I’m going to put off the side a little bit so that I can go ahead and run that blender just a little bit more, get a little bit smoother. And by the time it gets to our first couple of—oops. And one thing that I have added is the chicken base so I have taste for salt—I mean this salt and pepper is generally something you finish things off with. Because your volume if you over pepper something it’s hard to get the pepper out if you over salt something of course its hard to get.

Now , there is one trick, I’ve known people grab or didn’t read the instructions right and put in way more salt but made a huge thing of chilli or something like that. You can peel potatoes, turn the half burn them a little boil for an hour and those potatoes will suck that salt right out of your dish and save it, yes. So those are done and I’m going to taste my soup now, see what’s—

Female: Did you put anything in the butter or is just that—

There’s enough butter yet absolutely and you see all nice—as you can watch them and if I throw something in the broiler, I usually go do something else and—it’s always too late when you smell it. I know I’m going to need some salts in here so I’ll go ahead and put some bouillon in. And generally white pepper, white sauce, black pepper, a dark sauce. There is a little bit difference in flavor, I mean that the same guy just once got I think it’s past on the outside right is the main difference but, I like the black pepper in there. I like to look of it so.

Spotted soup, now this is the point we want to taste it, so we did. Just needs a tiny bit more salt and it’s ready and used to be just little bit warmer and it will be ready to serve. Of course presentation is always something you want to think about and one of the best things you can do for that is a variety of plates I think, you know different bowls, if your dish lacks color. I never tried that before, you try that in the restaurant now.

Use the tomato for some garnish, do you have any fresh basil on that plant that you can pluck a couple of cool leaves off for me? Thanks. Okay, and once this starts boil like that, you do want to bring the temperature down. You know you don’t want give it a chance to break it you never know what it might do. And when you’re pouring soups, your sauces aim for the middle of the bowl because you don’t want to have to clean up the edge and you know that’s where our drip is going to be, so take it to the dish.

Thank you very much and we have a garden in the back, next to the tennis court.

There’s nothing that’s going to change in this flavor really usually when we stew things or let things cook, it’s because we change the texture of it like you know like a stew meat. You know stew meat is tough and so the first thing that happens when you cook is all the moisture goes. So now it’s tough and dry, we keep cooking it and it looses up and it falls apart, and then the moisture comes back in that’s where it makes the difference or not still soup or something like that.

We’re sautéing your onions or your mir poir, your carrots and you’re sautéing longer pulling those sugars out, those make difference in the flavor. But once we got to the point where we get our cream and you know it’s just going to make that much difference and I don’t think you’d notice, to be honest with you.

So there we got our—

Chef: How do you fix—Oh I’ll give you that a second.