I made yeto’s pumpkin/goat cheese/salmon soup and it’s changing my life a little bit, like holy SHIT this yeti knows what he’s doing
Op you are a god
If you want that sherry to really pull its weight, here's what you do.
Instead of roasting your pumpkin (or butternut squash as some comments have said) in the skin, peel it and cube it before roasting. It's more work, but you will get more flavor development as I will describe in a moment. Also roughly chop your carrot and onion. Toss them and the garlic all with oil and salt, then roast on a metal baking sheet.
Don't crowd them, or they will steam instead of browning. You're looking for some deep brown color. You will find that things stick to the pan, this is okay. The browning is a combination of Maillard reaction and caramelization, two distinct but delicious processes.
After everything is nicely browned and softened, transfer it all to a bowl and put your baking sheet on the stove. I want to double check here, I specified a METAL making sheet. You do this part with a glass baking dish and it will explode. There should be a ton of roasty toasty brown stuff left on the sheet. Turn on a burner under it and pour in the sherry. You can also use white wine here. As the sherry comes to a simmer, use a sharp spatula to scrape the brown bits up in it. The liquid will start to dissolve the residue and extract the flavor. Move the sheet around with a hot pad so the hot spot and liquid move where you need them to get all of it. This stuff is FLAVOR GOLD. What you're doing is called deglazing the pan, a simple cooking technique that cranks flavor up to 11.
Put all your veggies and the liquid from the pan together and make the rest of the soup as described above.
oh my god I never considered deglazing a baking sheet like this…. I will consider for next time….
I did almost roast the onions, garlic, and other veggies with the pumpkin, but chose not to so I wouldn’t be standing around for 30-40 minutes and so I could keep prepping as I waited for the pumpkin to soften.
I wanted to sauté the pumpkin a little bit with the other veggies before adding the stock, but I VASTLY overestimated how much time I would take to prep everything so I still had 20 minutes on the timer before the pumpkin was done. I used mostly butter as my fat, and then as it dried out I started adding a little bit of fish stock at a time until it condensed and the veggies started to brown. I suppose I could have added the sherry at that point too 🤔
