Thursday, November 15, 2012

Marks & Spencer eat you heart out - or my mushroom soup


Sometimes I prepare recipes again and again and then somehow just forget about them. Happened to me with this mushroom soup. When I lived in London for a few years, Marks & Spencer sold such a wonderfully flavorful and delicious mushroom soup I never even thought of preparing my own.  But as these shops do, all of a sudden they stopped selling it. So I saw the error of my ways and found this recipe to prepare my own and just as tasty soup. And then forgot about it. Totally. This Tuesday it was freezing cold and our Provençal market had but two items in abundance: walnuts and mushrooms. And all of a sudden I remembered and then even found my old recipe - the search took longer than the cooking...
 
5 dried porcini and 600 gr (1.3 pounds) chestnut mushrooms
olive oil
2 shallots and 2  cloves of garlic
2 sprigs of thyme
1/2 l (2 cups) vegetable stock
3 tbsp crème fraîche (thick cream)
salt and pepper, some stalks of flat leaf (Italian) parsley
 
Soak the dried porcini in 1/4 l  (1 cup) warm water until soft. Clean the chestnut mushrooms with a brush, save two mushrooms for decoration, roughly chop up the rest of the mushrooms. Peel and also roughly chop the shallots and garlic. Heat a splash of olive oil, add mushrooms, shallots, garlic, the leaves of the tyme and stir fry for a couple of minutes. Add the soaked porcini. Pour the soaking water of the porcini through a filter to catch any remaining dirt, then add the filtered soaking water and the vegetable stock to the mushrooms and season with a few rounds of the pepper mill and a pinch of salt. Let simmer for about 10 minutes before liquidizing the mixture with a stick blender. Stir in the crème fraîche, adjust the seasoning if necessary and decorate with mushroom slices and some chopped parsley.



15 comments:

  1. i love mushroom soup and can not wait to make this! it looks delicious!

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  2. What a delicious soup Barbara, mushroom and garlic are made for each other aren't they? I do like M&S soups too but no comparison to yours!:) xx Ozlem

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  3. Love mushroom soup, yum yum. Have a good weekend Diane

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  4. Barbara, mushroom soup is such a favorite of mine. I saw these gorgeous mushrooms at the markets in Provence two weeks ago. How I wish I could have brought them home. Will try to find a substitute in the US, but it will not be the same. Susan and Dale

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    1. I am still a bit sad we didn't get to see each other this time, Susan.

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  5. as I love all kinds of soup especially at this time of the year, I'm looking forward to try out this one,
    greetings from Berlin

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  6. Replies
    1. Thank you, Tim - it tastes even better than it looks...

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  7. That picture of the fresh porcini is just gorgeous! This sounds like such a good mushroom soup.

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  8. I love mushroom soup. I would make it often if I was there in the Vaucluse during the heart of the mushroom season with the beautiful mushrooms that you get at the Vaison market every week. Thanks for sharing your recipe. Have a great weekend.

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  9. what to say: this is wonderful! A proper mushroom soup full of flavour. No comparison with M&S soups; even if they are good they are never like the proper stuff you can make at home.
    I love it.

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