Moscato-Poached Pear and Acorn Squash Bisque

I like to take the chill off the late afternoons in our Indian summer by baking a couple loaves of bread.  I sort of cheat and keep the oven on so the air is nice and hot for my loaves to rise, so I figured I’d toss in the acorn squash my gracious neighbors gave us from their harvest last week to soften it up.  One thing led to another and I started to think about just how the squash might best accompany my bread. Hmmm, smeared all over it a la fingerpaint-style the way my one year old Bentley would surely prefer it given his penchant for all things messy? Yeah, probably not.  “I have it!” I thought to myself, some sort of squashy dipping sauce for my little chewy french bread nuggets- what do they usually call that? Oh yeah, soup. Well, in my house we like to whir it all up into a tizzy with the immersion blender and call it bisque, so what the hell, why not make squash soup- sounds fabulous!

I’ve always been a fan of pairing gourds with the firmer orchard fruits in soups, and the pears could not be sweeter right now, so that was an easy one.  Oftentimes I would use apples instead of pears, and if that were the case I would typically grill them to seal in their juices and caramelize their flavor, but since the pairs are a bit more mealy, I wanted to cook them in a style befitting their properties, so I thought a slow poach woud just about do the trick.  Poaching liquid can be tough, however- water is simply too boring, and chicken or vegetable stock puts too much savory into a soup with a sweeter base, so I went back to the drawing board I often find myself staring at in instances like these- the wine fridge (hey, you can’t blame me for going there for inspiration- everything’s better through rosé-colored glasses, right?).

That’s when the second !Aha! moment of the experiment occurred.  You see, I’ve had a bottle of Moscato tooling around my wine fridge for the past six months that I just haven’t been able to justify drinking.  Allow me to attempt to explain my logic.  Moscato is no more than 6.5% alcohol and it’s very sweet.  This means that in order to, shall we say, feel its effects, you’d have to drink so much of it you’d surely end up with quite the headache the next day from all the sweetness. Trust me J.  Therefore, when I spied the bottle peering back at me I had finally found its intended purpose- to poach my pears.  Unfortunately now I’ve opened quite the can of worms as it performed so well in the soup I see cases and cases of it in my future. 

Just about the time I was rolling my dough into loaves for a final rise, I traded the acorn squash for the pears in Moscato in the oven, and set about chopping up a mirepoix of carrots, celery and onions to formulate the base of the soup.  At that point it was well past 5’oclock, even in my own time zone, so I felt justified pouring an ample glass of Roero Superiore- all in a day’s work, right? Without further ado, please enjoy this bisque as much as everyone in my house did!

Moscato-Poached Pear and Acorn Squash Bisque

Serves 6-8 with fresh baked bread as accompaniment

• 1 acorn squash halved, seeded, and baked flesh side down in 1/2” of water at 400° until soft
• 1 750 ml bottle Moscato d’Asti
• 5 pears halved and cored (Comite or other sweet variety)
• 4 tbsp unsalted butter
• 2 medium carrots chopped coarse
• 2 celery stalks chopped coarse
• 1 sweet onion (such as Walla Walla) chopped coarse
• 2 cups heavy cream
• Fresh grated nutmeg to taste
• Halen Mon Welsh smoked salt to taste (or your preferred salt.  We like the smoky flavor the Halen Mon imparts on the soup)
• Crème fraiche to garnish (optional)

1.  Preheat oven to 400°.  Place pears halved side down in a medium shallow baking dish. Pour Moscato over pears and bake in preheated oven until needed in recipe (about 20 minutes).
2. Melt butter in large dutch oven. Stir in carrots, celery and onions and cook until soft (about 10 minutes).
3. Add hot pears and moscato to dutch oven. Stir to break up pear clumps and continue to cook over medium heat for 10 minutes.
4. Add acorn squash flesh to dutch oven and stir to incorporate into soup.
5. Add half the cream to the soup then puree using an immersion blender or in batches in a standing blender. Add the remaining cream, heat through, add nutmeg and salt to taste.  Ladle into bowls, garnish if you desire, and serve with fresh-baked french bread straight from the oven.