Butternut Squash Soup

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.Start out by making a paste out of one of the garlic cloves and the spices (except for nutmeg). I kind of ground them together with a mortar and pestle. Mix in the olive oil.Halve the butternut squash lengthwise and spread the paste over the squash. Roast in the oven until soft, about one hour. (I should probably have made a little more paste, as it didn't stretch quite as far as I would have hoped.)While the squash is roasting, melt the butter in a large pot and add the carrots, onion and the second clove of garlic (diced). Sauté for about ten minutes, or until the onion begins to brown.When the butternut squash is finished roasting, scoop the nice innards out and add them to the pot with the carrots, onion and garlic.Add the 2 bay leaves and about 4 cups of broth (chicken, veggie, whatever your preference). Simmer for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. The squash will start to cook down into the broth, turning all soft and delicious. Add more broth as needed.Once the squash is all cooked down, you need to smooth it out. You can either transfer the soup to a food processor in batches or, if you don't mind your soup being a little chunky (I like that in a soup), you can just use an immersion blender like I did. Oh yeah, remove the bay leaves before blending.At this point your soup is going to look remarkably like baby food, and that's okay. Taste for seasoning and add salt, pepper and nutmeg to taste. I ended up adding some more curry, cardamom and coriander as well at this point. You will also likely need some more broth to thin it out a little. I also added a tiny bit of milk before spooning it into a bowl.Garnish with the walnuts and dig on in.