Parsi Squash

Oct 1, 2021

I made this recipe sometime the summer break after my first soup season when I was rooting through this random assortment of legumes that had collected in my cabinets. It’s as if my soup were actually one of my children, went off to college, and left a pile of their stuff under their bed to be discovered by their heartsick, sappy mom. I pulled out every forlorn souvenir of soup bowls past and held it lovingly in my palms for a moment—only one—and rushed to one of my favorite sources of soup inspiration, Madhur Jaffrey’s World Vegetarian cookbook. A Parsi soup screamed to me from its pages, which I thought was fitting as Parsi cooking is kind of a cultural mishmash of flavors I love, which felt like an apt metaphor for the soup I was going to materialize from my cabinets. In it, I decided to use one of my favorite fall squashes, delicata, an under-appreciated fellow that is so pretty I feel is often confused for the inedible sort you put at the center of your Thanksgiving table on the one day people somehow believe Martha Stewart might have warm family traditions. And thus, the origin story for this tasty soup that, once I took my first bite, I knew I would have to make for you. A bowl of tasty soup nonsense that seems fancy—oh how Auntie Martha would be proud to see me now!

Serving Suggestions:

  • Temper additional spices/fresh chiles in hot oil or ghee and spoon over top (called a “tadka”)
  • Serve with Sambal Oelek or chili flakes – Parsi cooking is often spicy
  • Serve over rice (I would choose red rice for this guy as another of our family’s favorites!) or other favorite grain; if you can eat gluten, this would be amazing over cooked farro
  • Stir in shredded rotisserie chicken

Show me how you cook and serve it by emailing me your photo! Submissions are automatically entered to win a drawing for a Soup Club cookbook.


Yes, all this fun and love went into the recipe. That’s why it tastes so good.


Two books of mine came out today, here and here.


 

 

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