Every year I host an extravagant dinner party for my friends. We set the dining room table up in the living room so that it’s near the warm and crackling fireplace and I ask everyone to dress up and bring their favorite bottle of wine. Last year I made a Curried Coconut Squash Soup and it was a huge hit!
I call it Friendsgiving and it’s my favorite night of the holiday season.
I make everything from scratch and I use just about every cooking apparatus in my kitchen. For a couple weeks leading up to the dinner I test recipes and make tweaks and practice plating. It’s a foodie’s dream come true. I also love to create a beautiful setting which includes a low maintenance tablescape.
This year I decided to host a cooking class to teach other healthy foodies how to put on their own Friendsgiving dinner party and it was a huge success! I’m sure I’ll do one again next year so mark your calendars!
Anyhoo… now that the class is over and I’m elbow deep planning my own Friendsgiving I thought I would share a couple of the recipes from class as well as one of the cooking segments I did on CBS. Watch the video below.
Now that you’ve watched the video I want to share the recipe for the soup we featured in the segment. It’s a Curried Coconut Squash Soup with Apple, Lime and Cilantro.
This is such a great soup for entertaining because you can make everything in advance and the flavor gets better with an extra day or two in the fridge. Plus it also happens to be gluten free, dairy free and can easily be made vegan by substituting the bone broth for vegetable broth.
Here a couple of quick tips when making this dish:
• Chop the apples in advance and store them in cold water with a squeeze of lemon to keep them from browning.
• Put your coconut milk in a squeeze bottle like this one to make drizzling the milk easy and beautiful.
• An immersion blender is one of my favorite tools and makes soups SO much easier to make.
• Use a good quality olive oil to drizzle on top. My favorite ones are Persian Lime from and Harissa from Baker + Olive.
Now on to the recipe!
CURRIED COCONUT SQUASH SOUP
Prep Time: 15 minutes, Cook Time: 30 minutes. Serves 4
Download the Curried Coconut Squash Soup Recipe Here
2 tablespoons avocado or grapeseed oil
1 ½” piece of ginger, sliced and crushed
4 clove garlic, minced
3 cups Kabocha or butternut squash, rind and seeds removed, and cut into 1” pieces
2 heaping teaspoons curry
1 15oz can of full fat coconut milk, reserve 1/4 to use for garnish
3 cups bone broth or vegetable broth
½ diced apple for garnish
Zest and Juice of one lime
½ bunch cilantro, chopped
Lime or Chile Oil for garnish
salt and pepper to taste
Heat oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add ginger and garlic and cook until slightly browned, about 3-4 minutes. Add curry and lime juice and cook until fragrent – about 1 minutes. Add squash, and broth. Bring to a boil, reduce to low and simmer, covered, for 30 minutes.
Puree soup in blender or with a stick blender and add coconut milk. Season with salt and pepper.
So serve. Ladle soup in a bowl and drizzle with coconut milk, olive oil and garnish with chopped cilantro, apple and lime zest.
Enjoy!
[…] couple posts ago I talked about my annual Friendsgiving party and I shared one of my favorite recipes – a curried coconut squash soup with a cilantro […]