Butternut Squash Soup with Walnut Pesto Recipe

Everyone makes butternut squash soup, so how can we make it more interesting? The walnut pesto adds layers of flavor from herbs, funkiness from cheese, and crunch from the nuts so the one-dimensional, everybody-makes-it standby is now a lot more interesting. I use Pecorino instead of Parmesan because it is sharper (I think of it as more “sheepy”), so it stands out instead of fading into the squash, which Parmesan will do.