I Made Ugly Soup! or "Close Your Eyes and Think of England" Chowder

My husband, Dr. Smartypantz, let me know today that he doesn't actually like leeks all that much.

And I was all, "WHAT? But... you brag about my potato-leek soup to people!
And he said, "Yeah. Well, I like it without leeks, actually."

Ok, then.

So I had some really nice ingredients that all needed a cuddle, gastronomically-speaking.
(I feel like a cross between a bad Harlequin novel and Iron Chef right about now.)

The list:

One adorable little squash. 

I KNOW! It's like if Pilgrims designed a Dreidel!

And I had some lovely, fresh  leeks

and 

Some wilty baby spinach, some wilty cilantro, and some hairy carrots.  (You know, when you find them behind the lettuce and they've gotten all these weird tendrils of what is certainly the carrot equivalent of old-man-ear-hair?)

Oh, and some forgotten lettuce.Which had been hiding the ear-hair carrots.

I stabbed the adorable little Dreidel-squash a few times and put it in a pyrex dish at 350 F for a while.  About 20 minutes?  Nothing much seemed to be happening, so I grabbed my biggest, baddest hatchet-like knife and chopped it in two.  Cleaved it, as it were.  And I disemboweled it. Plopped it back into the dish and back into the oven.  And pronptly forgot about it. 

We'll say I chose to carmelize it.

[BTW: blogger chooses NOT to recognize the word "Dreidel" but thinks that "pronptly" is fine.]

I had my daughter clean the leeks (which I had halved and cut the green parts from) in a sink of water.  In a big ol' pot, I melted a little butter and then tossed in the leeks.  (I had her take a scissor to them while they were floating in the water, so they were roughly chopped).

Let the leeks sautee a bit, and added 2 sliced carrots.  

I chopped up the spinach, cilantro, and some lettuce together and added to the pot after maybe 5 minutes.  Kept the heat pretty high because there was a lot of steaming going on.

I peeled and crushed a couple cloves of garlic too, and added them.  

I was going to add a few cups of chicken broth, but SHIZNIT, no broth.  So I added water.

POOF!  Lots of steam.  Mama's facial, I like to call it.

Cookcookcook. Let the girl-child stir, as it would do absolutely no harm.

Now, at this point, I went, OMG! THE SQUASH!

And I pulled it out of the oven, noting the gorgeous carmelization that was totally on purpose.

Now here's where I went off the rails, recipe-wise.  

I should have strained all the veggies out of the well-cooked broth.  I was going to.  I had EVERY INTENTION of doing that.  And then I looked at all those hard-working leeks, all those sad, ignored carrots, and I couldn't bring myself to do it.  It seemed like senseless, wasteful veggiecide.

I wanted their demise to HAVE MEANING.  

So I pureed them. 

I wanted all that fibery goodness.  

It looked weird. Verrry greeny-orangey weird.  (Remember the carrots? It's all their fault.)

So at that point, I figured, "What the heck," so I scooped out the squash innards and added THEM to the soup and pureed IT.

And now it's an unappetizing green/orange slick.  I closed my eyes and thought of England, and tasted it.

WHOA.  How is it possible that something so intensely UGLY could be so good?  It's like finding out that the ugly nose-picking guy next to you in junior high gym class grew up to have a spectacular body and an M.D..  It's just not right. You can appreciate it, but still....

I salted to taste, added some half-and-half, stirred, and took another 'think of England' taste.  I took one for the team.

Again, WHOA.  Even better.  So now, all I have to do is find a way to make it not so "Exorcist"-looking.  Maybe a big pile of chopped tomatoes, some  big garnishes of cilantro leaves?  A BIG HAT AND SUNGLASSES?

So there you have Ugly soup.  Or "Close Your Eyes and Think of England" Chowder.