Butternut squash and pepper stew

After a gorgeous, sunny fall in the bay area, cold weather hit for a few days this week.  I bundled in sweaters and brought out the soup pot.  Actually, even though it was sunny and warm last week I made a southwestern stew, so the soup pot hadn't been hibernating.   There's just something satisfying about making a big pot of soup when it's cold outside.  Last week I was browsing the Everyday Greens cookbook last week and was inspired by two stew recipes with similar vegetables (roasted butternut squash and red peppers), but with very different flavor profiles. One was heavily spiced with chiles, while the other relied on the natural flavors of the vegetables.  After making the spiced stew last week, this week I used the same vegetables but with a different flavor profile.

For the non-spiced stew I used a sweet vegetable mix of onion, fennel, red, yellow and orange bell peppers, and roasted butternut squash, with some of the stock we make in batches and keep in the freezer.  This was rounded out with chard roasted plum tomatoes and cannelli beans.  About the plum tomatoes...the tomatoes were dense and thick skinned, better for cooking than for eating raw.  I roasted halves face down with a little olive oil and salt on the exposed skins.  The skin and innards of the tomatoes separated, and while the meat went into the stew pot, the skins made tasty snacking right off the roasting pan.  It was sort of like eating potato skins with some tooth and salt, but with more flavor and less guilt.

The usual chopping, roasting and simmering ensued, and as the stew simmered the beans broke up to make a slightly thickened sauce.  White wine, garlic and salt were the only spices, and the flavors of the vegetables merged beautifully.  Next time I'll add some mushrooms as well; they would add a nice earthiness.  The stew was great as it was, but also on the sweet side because of the peppers, fennel and squash.  However, Aaron made pesto last month using the last of the sweet and lemon basil from the garden.  He froze it in small portions so we have doses of lemon-basil pesto for the winter.  We plopped a dollop on each bowl of stew, and the aroma and taste balanced the dish perfectly. 

The stew was rounded out with a glass of petite syrah and a fire...perfect for the first real night of fall.