Roasted Butternut Squash Soup

There is a moment each fall when the markets overflow with butternut squash, their tan skins stacked in towering pyramids, and I know soup season has arrived. This is not merely vegetable soup. This is transformation: hard, raw squash rendered into something so silky, so deeply flavored, that guests will swear there must be some secret ingredient.

The secret is roasting. Most recipes call for simmering cubed squash in stock until tender. This produces adequate soup. Adequate is not what we're after. Roasting the squash whole at high heat caramelizes its natural sugars, concentrates its flesh, and develops flavors that boiling water washes away. The extra forty-five minutes in the oven makes all the difference between soup you eat because it's there and soup you dream about.

I learned the power of roasted squash from a farmer's wife in Vermont who had been making this soup for fifty years. She roasted everything: the squash, the onions, even the garlic. Her kitchen smelled like woodsmoke and maple and the particular sweetness of vegetables giving up their moisture to dry heat. I've simplified her method, but the principle remains. Honor the ingredient by letting it develop character before you add liquid.

This soup improves over time. Make it Sunday afternoon, and it will be better Monday evening. The flavors settle and deepen like an old friendship.