Video Transcript

Hello, I'm John Moeller, formal White House Chef, the three First Families and author of Dining at the White House. Today, we're here at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, RLPS Architects Bistro. And we're going to show you how to make butternut squash and brie soup. This is a whole butternut squash. So, the first thing I do, is I cut off the ends. Now, it's stable, we're going to split right down the middle. O.k., this part of the butternut squash is very thick up in the neck area, and down here is the seeds. We're going to need to remove the seeds now. I will just take a spoon and just scoop them out. I like taking it out on a sheet pan with parchment paper, put them on a pan, take a little bit of oil. I have some grapeseed oil. We rubbed the outside of the butternut squash liberally with the grapeseed oil. after it's completely covered, I'm going to take this half sheet pan and put it in the oven, cook it at 375 degrees for about 30 minutes to 45 minutes. Now, I've just taken these butternut squash out of the oven, they've been baking for about 45 minutes or so. I took the knife, they went in and out, nice and tender. So, they're ready to go. I'm going to put these on the side and we're going to start preparing the rest of the soup here. If you're familiar with leeks, it's part of the onion family and it has a wonderful onion flavor to it. So, what we're going to do, is we're going to cut off the ends here and you want mainly the white portion of the leek. When we go to clean it, because it's very sandy inside, we have to split it in half. The leek, if you can see here, is oblong. So, we need to cut it right down the middle this way and not this way. Put it on my cutting board and split it right down the middle, alright. So, now, it's open and I can see here, there's sand, and we need to wash that off. Now, I've washed off the leeks, and you cannot wash them when they're split in half. You have to inspect each layer here to make sure that it's clean. So, the next thing I do, is I take the leeks and I split them in half. I make long julienne cuts, then we turn it this way and we make a dice. We're going to put it in a pan here, I'm going to start getting that warm, medium-low heat. I'm going to cook it down with some butter, it's something that's referred to as sweating. We're going to sweat out the moisture from the vegetable, concentrate that great onion flavor of the leek, add some softened butter. It's always nice to have a little bit of soft butter, I have about a cup and a half, total of leeks that I've diced up for this. You do not want to saute these at too high of a temperature, or we're going to colorize the leeks, we want to sweat them. We're just going to slowly cook them for a few minutes to cook out the moisture. We can now go to our butternut squash that's been cooling down over here. We're going to place them on our cutting board, flesh side up. Now, we're going to take a spoon and gently scrape the flesh away from the skin. A lot of times, people might take the cut up butternut squash and boil it on the stove and then, use it for a soup. You're adding moisture to it by cooking it in the oven, we have removed some of the moisture and concentrated the flavor of the butternut squash. And out all the skin on the side here, this will be discarded. And then, we have our brie cheese. We're not going to add the brie cheese in right now, we're going to add in a little bit later. So, what we're going to do, is we're just going to cut it initially into some strips here. And then, afterwards we'll add it to the soup at the very last minute. There's a lot of butter fat content in the brie cheese, so we want to just add it in, incorporate it and serve it. If it heats for too long of a time, it's going to separate and the butter fat will come to the surface and not look that nice. So, we're going to take about a teaspoon of garlic and add that to our leeks. We need to cook out the garlic for a minute or two here before we ad dour butternut squash. We can add a little bit of seasoning, I like using sea salt and a little bit of fresh ground black pepper. Alright, now we're going to be adding our butternut squash to our pan with the leeks and the garlic, all sweated down. The next ingredient we need to add to it, is some chicken stock. You could use a vegetable stock, which is fine too. I like the rich flavor of the chicken stock. This is probably about 16 ounces, about two cups of chicken stock, we're going to add to this. It's good to add more, if needed, don't add too much at one time. We're going to bring this up to a boil, I'm going to turn this up to high heat. Once this comes up to a simmer, it will not take long to boil it. And then, we're going to put it into a blender and then, we're going to puree it smooth. Our butternut squash and leek soup has been cooking for about 10 minutes or so. Now, we're going to take this and we're going to put it into our blender, alrighty. And you have to be very careful when turning it on. If it's a blender with a sealed top there, the steam is going to shoot up towards the top there, if you start it on high. Start it on low, sometimes I may even pulse it, before actually turning it on low to medium to high. But never ever start it on high speed. So, we're going to completely puree the leek and the butternut squash together. You can't see any chunks of leek in there, this looks like a nice consistency. You now pour it back into our pan. What we need to do now is, we're going to add a little bit of cream, you don't have to use cream, it could be a cream-less soup, bu it's nice to have a little bit of cream in there. We're going to bring it back up to a simmer. I used to make this soup a lot at the White House, especially for lunch time for the First Lady. She always enjoyed a soup and salad. And especially in the fall when it's nice and fresh. Alright, now our soup is looking pretty good, I like the thickness of it. Now, we just check the taste, see if it needs a little more salt and pepper. O.k., now we're going to take our brie cheese, we're going to fold that into the soup and it's a very soft cheese, a brie is. I've had it out at room temperature, it's very good to let it sit at room temperature before we put it into the soup, though. I'm also going to take some fresh chives here and just snip off a few. It's very good to cut the chives, just before you use them because it's a little bit more aromatic. The cheese is melted, alright, so we're going to take that, we're going to put the portion inside our bowl. And we're going to take some of our fresh chives and out them out like that. And here you go. I'm John Moeller, formal White House Chef, the three First Families and author of Dining at the White House. And that was how to make a butternut squash and brie soup. Always remember, cook well and eat well.