So I don’t know about you, but I’m obsessed with Panera’s Autumn Squash soup. Like, I don’t even know how I made it through fall without it in the past. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, go to your nearest Panera ASAP. It’s basically a butternut squash soup, but upon looking at the ingredient list (dietitian alert) I found it also has pumpkin and a wee bit of parm cheese. Hello, could those two things could ever make anything bad? Never.
Anyway, my new-found love of this soup peaked my interest in butternut squash. Oh, I’m not the only one? Yeah? You’ve noticed the squash-obsession around the blog world too? Well I know it’s a fad-food but it’s for a good reason: it’s delicious.
Butternut squash not only tastes good, but it’s good for you. Ever heard of vitamin A? Yeah this baby is chocked-full of it. You can tell by the color - orange! - which is the pigment of beta carotenes. Good for your eyes, your skin, and just your everything - beta carotenes are antioxidants. Carrots, pumpkins and sweet potatoes are also good sources of vitamin A (no way, how could you tell?).
So back to that Panera soup. After spending far too much money on bowls of soup and baguettes at Panera I decided it was time to take matters into my own hands. Naturally, I went out and bought a giant butternut squash from the store thinking I could somehow recreate that magical golden liquid in my kitchen. But I could not, for the life of me, find a recipe that even sounded like it would be a good copy of their soup.
As I was about to throw in the towel and just eat the whole squash plain and roasted, a little birdy told me that Becky over at Olives’n'Wine was coming up on her one year blog anniversary. Of course I had to check her recipes to see if she had anything with the beloved squash - and she did! And wouldn’t you know it, it was a risotto recipe. Being that risotto was still not checked off of my food bucket list for the year, it was a match made in heaven.
Her recipe can be found here - and here’s what I did differently…
- Cut the recipe in half
- Nixed the carrots and just doubled the amount of squash
- Subbed goat cheese in place of the parm
- Used pumpkin pie spice instead of the individual cinnamon/nutmeg
Before I talk about the outcome… Can we just talk for a minute about how therapeutic this whole experience was? Propped in front of the stove-top with a wooden spoon in one hand and a glass of wine in the other for almost an hour, just stirring and stirring and stirring? Call me crazy but that’s just what I needed to relax.
Creamy, steamy and subtly-cheesy.. this risotto will make you want to cry tears of joy. I really am not exaggerating by saying that either. As if you needed another reason to love butternut squash.. It is worth every second in front of that stove-top. I actually meant to wilt in a big handful of spinach at the end for a little bit of green but I lost all self-control and dug right in. It resembles the flavor of that Panera soup, but it’s even better.
Becky, you won my heart with this one! Happy one year on the blog 
