Recipe: Roasted butternut squash soup

A few days ago I acquired a copy of Mary McCartney's Food, and a combination of the cold weather we've been having and the fact that butternut squash was on offer in my local supermarket made me decide to make her roasted butternut squash and rosemary soup. I knew I didn't have rosemary at home, but I thought what the heck, I'll try it anyway. Only when I got back armed with the butternut squash, I also discovered I didn't have three other key ingredients - celery, carrots and creme fraiche/sour cream. Still, I decided to plow on, and my adaptation turned out to be pretty flipping delicious. Here's my recipe, with notes about McCartney's below.

1. Cut the butternut squash in half, take out the seeds, drizzle with olive oil and put in an oven at 170 degrees C for around 45 minutes. Once done, leave to cool slightly, then scoop out the insides.

2. Finely dice two medium onions and crush a clove of garlic and saute for about five minutes in olive oil. Add the butternut squash you've scooped out, half a tsp of chilli flakes and 800ml of vegetable stock. Simmer for 15 minutes.

3. Add salt and black pepper to taste and take off the heat. Leave to cool, then add two tbsps of Greek yoghurt and blend the mixture until smooth. Reheat to piping and serve.

McCartney's recipe involved laying rosemary sprigs in the hollow part of each squash before roasting, which could be discarded after. She also advised on peeling the skin off the squash and cutting it into pieces after taking it out of the oven, but I found this too fiddly so just went with the scooping method. Her recipe called for sauteing a carrot and two sticks of celery with the onion, and she didn't use garlic. And McCartney's recipe uses two tablespoons of creme fraiche or soured cream where I used Greek yoghurt.