Spiced Butternut Squash Soup

[Nature's Babe]

Saute some onion till translucent and soft, add some curry paste to taste and fry gently, add cubed butternut squash and vegetable or chicken stock
simmer till tender and blitz till smooth. Add chopped parsley or coriander and a swirl of cream or creme fraiche.
Variation -
if you can get some Patak's Prawn Bachilow use that in place of the curry paste, and stir in a few prawns to heat through at the end of cooking, quite delicious and makes it a dinner party first course.

correction it should read prawn balichow not bachilow
http://www.spicesofindia.co.uk/acatalog ... ichow.html

[alan refail]

Sounds good - should be good with acorn squash too.

A question: what's Prawn Bachilow? Patak's don't seem to have it.

[Nature's Babe]

Prawn bachilow is a curry / prawn paste cum pickle Alan, made by patacks but not many places stock it, you might get it in an ethnic type shop. alternatively you can buy prawns in their shell and make a prawn stock from boiling up the shells. Or use prawn paste with the curry paste if you can get it.

[alan refail]

As I said, NB, Patak's know nothing of it

http://www.pataks.co.uk/products/

Also googling bachilow brings up nothing remotely relevant

I can only imagine you may be confusing it with shrimp paste which I use regularly, but has nothing to do with curry or pickle (or Patak's) and is very much an acquired taste.

Where did you find your bachilow?

[Nature's Babe]

It seems they have stopped making it Alan, but they used to a few years ago and I used to buy it quite regularly. as you said a shrimp paste would do. or stock from prawn shells. I just checked and the last one I bought was made by Ferns and its called prawn balichow.

http://www.spicesofindia.co.uk/acatalog ... ichow.html

I think I wrote prawn bachilow close, but it's balichow, maybe why you couldn't find it.

[alan refail]

Bore da NB

What a relief!

I have often been called overly pedantic - but it just goes to show the truth of my maxim that spelling is important

What you wrote now makes sense to me (and Mr Google).

To avoid disasters, if anyone does follow your recipe, I would strongly advise them NOT to use shrimp paste instead unless they smell it first!

Here's a well-informed article on the connections between shrimp preparations in the sub-continent and the far east:

http://adambalic.typepad.com/the_art_an ... index.html