belle's recipe for corn and butternut squash chowder

I looked at 20 recipes and didn't like any of them. So I made one up. It's really good! Sweet with a kick. To make vegetarian, substitute vegetable broth and take out the bacon. To make vegan, add twice the amount of pureed squash & corn to make the broth thick without milk, though you then might need more vegetable broth.

Ingredients:

5 ears of shucked corn, or one 10 oz. bag of frozen corn
1 butternut squash
1 can corn niblets, the cheap kind from Del Monte or whatever
7 sage leaves
sea salt
dots of unsalted butter
1 sweet onion, chopped finely
1/4 tsp. cayenne
3 tsp. kosher salt
1 can chicken broth
2 cups whole milk
2 tbs. flour
3-4 yukon gold potatoes, peeled and diced
6 pieces of bacon, rendered crisp, drained, crumbled

Pre-cooking:

Shuck the corn, if you have corn to shuck. I cut off the tip to stabilize and cut downwards with a serrated knife. It still gets all over the place. Reserve for later.

Cut the squash in half. Scoop out seeds and pulp. Lay halves on baking sheet cut-side up. Dot with butter, sprinkle with sea salt, lay sage leaves on top. Roast at 400 F until they're done, which is for some reason like an hour.

When it's soft, scoop out the squash and puree in a food processor (include the sage leaves) with the can of cheap corn niblets. Try not to laugh when you say "niblets." Heh.

Cooking:

Take your soup pot and heat 1/8 cup olive oil. Sautee onion until soft on medium heat, about 5-7 min. Add cayenne and flour, and make sure the flour is cooked up. Raise heat to high, and pour in broth and two cups of milk and pureed squash and bring to a boil. Add salt, stir.

When it's boiling, add the raw corn and diced potatoes. Lower heat to a simmer, and let it simmer for 20-30 min. Add half of bacon to the chowder. If it's too thick, add a little milk to thin it out.

Serve with reserved crumbled bacon on top.

Be happy.