Blue Squash Soup Recipe

Bryan Calvert presents a method for preparing winter squash that moves beyond standard orange varieties. He recommends using baby blue Hubbard squash, a large and often unwieldy vegetable that can be difficult to handle. Calvert notes that the sweet, creamy orange flesh inside the blue skin is well suited for roasting, though his specific recipe calls for stovetop cooking.

The dish appears in Calvert's cookbook, "Brooklyn Rustic." The recipe serves four to six people and relies on a base of four tablespoons of unsalted butter, two diced celery stalks, one large shallot, and one small garlic clove. These aromatics cook until the shallot becomes translucent. The cook then adds half a baby blue Hubbard squash, or a large butternut squash as a substitute, along with two tablespoons of dry white wine. The wine reduces for about two minutes before the addition of two quarts of vegetable or chicken stock, one thyme sprig, and one bay leaf.

The mixture simmers on medium heat for 35 to 40 minutes until the vegetables are tender. During this time, the cook prepares the garnish. One red Bartlett pear is cored and sliced into matchstick pieces roughly two inches long. The pear slices are tossed in a bowl with vinegar, honey, two tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil, and a pinch of salt. The soup is pureed in a blender until smooth, with additional stock added to adjust consistency. It is seasoned with fine sea salt and freshly ground white pepper.

The finished soup is ladled into warm bowls or a tureen. The dish is topped with four ounces of crumbled blue cheese and the reserved pickled pears. Calvert notes that the soup freezes well, allowing cooks to use an entire squash and double the recipe for a larger batch. This approach addresses the issue of Hubbard squash growing to enormous sizes, making smaller baby varieties more practical for home kitchens.

Calvert ran James restaurant in Brooklyn from 2008 to 2013. Located on a residential corner of Prospect Heights, the restaurant became associated with the dining scene in new Brooklyn. Before James, Calvert cooked for years in fine dining establishments. He is also a co-founder of Cecil & Merl, a national brand selling artisanal home and kitchen goods. The recipe is excerpted from "Brooklyn Rustic," published in 2016 by Voracious, an imprint of Little, Brown and Company, based in New York, NY.