This week's French Friday with Dorie recipe is Beatrix's Red Kuri Soup. One big issue is that I could not, even during the autumn/winter, find a Red Kuri Squash. You can buy the seeds online here, but it seems that unless you grow Red Kuri Squash yourself, you can't acquire one.
Accordingly, one day in the autumn, I aw this adorable little pumpkin, and thought it might do:
As you see from the top of my post, it certainly made soup. However, as Dorie's recipe says to use the skin as well, I learned that this little pumpkin isn't quite the same as a Red Kuri Squash. I assume that when you cook the skin of a Red Kuri Squash, it becomes soft, so that it can be processed up into the soup. Not so the skin of this little darling:
The skin stays hard, even after cooking, so when you process the soup, you gets hundreds of tiny gritty pumpkin skin pebbles all through your soup.
Needless to say, that no matter how pretty my pumpkin, and how lovely the colour of the resulting soup, this was not a hit with me.
To see how Doristas who found a Red Kuri squash went with this soup, visit the LYL section of the website.
Oh dear - seedy soup doesn't sound quite right! I do find it hard to track down the squashes called for in some recipes. At least you had a go!
ReplyDeleteOops, well, live and learn. Yes, the skin of the red kuri squash does get nice and soft when cooked. It's actually another reason why I like this variety, because it allows me to skip the cumbersome peeling step. Your little pumpkin is very pretty. But sounds like he might make a better decoration than soup.
ReplyDeleteI think the closest thing I could think of that would work in this would be butternut squash (sans the skin of course!). Could you have strained out the skin do you think?
ReplyDeleteOh, no! That consistency does not sound one bit appealing. You gave it a good try, though :)
ReplyDeleteBummer about the pebbly texture. I've recently noticed that many squash skins are tender after cooking and have been experimenting with which ones I don't have to peel, but more as roasted slices, not in soup.
ReplyDeleteYour pumpkin does look adorable and just the right size for a batch of soup. I am kind of a nut that has to peel all her vegs, so that's not a problem I had with the butternut squash subtitution.
ReplyDeleteOh, no! I'm sorry such an adorable little pumpkin gave you so much grit.
ReplyDeleteUh oh. Sorry to hear you had issues :-(
ReplyDeleteI love the "sort of" in the title. Cooking along in blogs means sometimes you just can't get an ingredient and you learn along the way. That said, I think your soup looks really good, and chunks in soup never seem to bother the taste for me...it is pretty!
ReplyDeleteGaye, as far as I know, the only skin of any squash that is edible is the one from the red kuri squash, all others have to be peeled - at least that´s what we are told around here all the time - your soup has a lovely color though and the squash that you used is the cutest little squash!
ReplyDeleteHave a nice weekend!
Andrea
It's a shame to go through all that work to be
ReplyDeletedisappointed. The pumpkin is cute. I had
to use butternut squash as I could not find the red kuri either.
Oh, man! That is awful and that texture sounds completely unappetizing. Yes, the kuri squash skin does get soft!
ReplyDeleteOops, yeah, I don't really know of any other squash that you can eat the skin too. Bummer... it was such a pretty little pumpkin,
ReplyDeleteWhat kind of a squash is yours, Gaye. From all the investigation I did, I think the only squash that allows you to eat its skin is the Red Kuri. Go figure. As I've found often, sometimes the best of substitutions just do not work. Yeah, little pebbles in soup does not sound good.
ReplyDeleteThat's frustrating! I loved not having to peel the red kuri. I lucked into finding one here in Oklahoma but it was the first I've ever seen and I haven't seen them again. Hopefully, they're one of those things that will suddenly become more popular!
ReplyDelete