roasted butternut squash poblano soup

Fall for sure, so orange-fleshed squashes. This was the way to ring it all in. Everybody was impressed, so I guess I need to get this one down before I forget it.

1 butternut squash

2-3 small poblano peppers

2 small onions

1 shallot

2 carrots, peeled

2 ribs celery

6c chicken stock

~1c sherry or marsala

buttermilk 

heavy cream

fresh sage leaves

s&p

Preheat oven to 375. Peel, half, and seed the squash and cut to roughly 1" cubes. Toss with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and spread it evenly on one or two sheet pans. Roast till you can easily cut it with a fork, about 25 minutes. 

Meanwhile, roast the poblanos over a stove burner until the skin is black and blistering (or else rub them with oil and roast in the oven along with the squash until the skin is blistering). Put in a bowl and cover with plastic wrap to let it finish the job. When you're partway through doing some of the other stuff below, skin and seed the peppers and chop to roughly 1/2".

Dice the onions and shallot and carrot and celery fairly small. In a heavy pan, get some oil going over medium heat and start with the onions, then the shallots, then the carrot and celery, seasoning as you go. Deglaze with a goodly amount of sherry or marsala, and cook this all down for long enough to let the alcohol burn off. Add the squash, peppers, and stock and bring to a gentle boil. 

Simmer till the carrots are pliable, then use an immersion blender to make it all pretty smooth. Check seasonings, which will probably be fucked by all the new vegetable matter and sugar freed in the last few steps. Add a cup or so of buttermilk, and a glug or so of cream. Chop several tablespoons of sage fairly fine and add to the soup. Wait a few minutes and check seasonings again. 

For a garnish/finish I reduced some port and cream together and made pretty patterns on top, but I have since have thought of a few different ways to go in a fantasy cooking world, many of which I probably couldn't even execute: a salty walnut maple brittle, or diced apple sauteed with smoked bacon, or nuts and apples together in baconfat, or maybe even mushroom something or other, or something using the squash seeds to be all snout-to-tail about it. Smoky, tart, savory, leafy, nutty, forest-floory is the palette I'm thinking of. Lightly salted port cream actually worked pretty well for that, after all.