If at first you don’t succeed – soup soup again.

As promised in earlier ramblings tonight we are going to make a new soup.  Here’s the catch:  we know in advance that Maddy won’t eat it.  You might ask why we would make a soup that Maddy won't eat.  The answer is simple:  if it’s not Campbell’s Tomato or Chicken Noodle [1]  don’t waste your or my time.  So tonight will have to be one of those instructional times where we enjoy the cooking together as a family and understand that at least one of us is still 5 years old.[2]

Tonights Soup is:

Wild Mushroom Soup with Sherry
    *  8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter, room temperature
    * 2 cups sliced celery
    * 1 cup sliced shallots
    * 3/4 cup chopped onion
    * 3 garlic cloves, minced
    * 3 cups sliced stemmed fresh shiitake mushrooms (about 6 ounces)
    * 3 cups sliced crimini mushrooms (about 6 ounces)
    * 3 cups sliced oyster mushrooms (about 4 1/2 ounces)
    * 1/2 cup dry white wine
    * 1/2 cup dry Sherry
    * 1/4 cup all purpose flour
    * 8 cups chicken stock or canned low-salt chicken broth
    * 1/2 cup whipping cream

Melt 6 tablespoons butter in large pot over medium-high heat. Add celery, shallots, onion and garlic and sauté until onion is translucent, about 8 minutes. Add all mushrooms and sauté until beginning to soften, about 4 minutes. Add white wine and Sherry. Boil until liquid is reduced to glaze, about 6 minutes.

Mix remaining 2 tablespoons butter and 1/4 cup flour in small bowl until smooth paste forms. Add flour paste to mushroom mixture in pot; stir until mixture melts and coats vegetables. Gradually mix in stock. Bring to boil, stirring frequently. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer until mushrooms are tender, stirring often, about 10 minutes. Stir in cream. Season with salt and pepper. Working in batches, puree soup in blender or processor until smooth. Return soup to pot. (Can be prepared 1 day ahead. Cover and refrigerate. Rewarm over medium-low heat before serving.) Ladle soup into bowls and serve.


So there you have it.  The recipe in “real time” before I’ve even made the soup.  How much more exciting does a cooking blog get than that? [3]   Don’t expect any play-by-play cause soup making just aint that exciting.  Time to make da soup!

[2 hours later]

Making the soup was fun! [4]








First thing to note was we cut everything in half and it came out great!  Our best soup yet. It was creamier than I realized it was going to be.  It tasted like a jazzed-up [5] version of the traditional cream of mushroom I’m used to.  Maddy enjoyed helping cut up veggies and adding them to the pot.

She’s still a little afraid of the heat so she didn’t want to stir the veggies in the pot.  Basically this recipe is a bunch of steps off adding things and then blending them.

A tip for good flavor is to keep a bottle of dry sherry in the house.  Get the good stuff at a liquor store and not some cooking wine from grocery.  I wind up using it a lot for braising, sauces etc.







Cool tool #27 - The immersion blender.







If you have an immersion blender you don’t need to put the soup in the actual blender.  Either way I wouldn’t recommend over-blending.  I thought the consistency was nice to be a little thicker than other mushroom soups.  Keep in mind we were serving this as a vegetarian main course with salad so we were going for a hearty solution.  We like to serve vegetarian meals once a week and making this soup was a fun and fulfilling


-------------------------
[1] Don’t even think of substituting some other chicken noodle soup on the Madster.  She will make you pay….dearly.  We even tried the SAME soup with different shaped noodles and were dismissed like yesterday’s news.
[2] Others of us just pretend to be.  I’m just saying…
[3] Don’t answer that.
[4] Lots of trust involved in you reading my blog – I could be making all this up – I’m just saying….
[5] Better,  more good,  mushroomier