Saturday, October 27, 2012

Fresh Mushroom soup

A mushroom soup without cream, just mushrooms. This recipe serves 4 - 6 persons.
For best taste use flavourful mushrooms like Portobello mushroom, or a mix of different mushroom varieties.

Ingredients
500 g mushrooms
175 g butter
1 cup of wheat flour
1 cube stock (chicken or vegetable)
fresh ground pepper


Preparation
Clean and cut the mushrooms into fine pieces, keep a few in larger slices for garnish.
Put the cut up mushrooms in a pot add a bottom of water and put it on medium fire on the stove. Let the mushrooms simmer for about 5 mins or slightly longer, occasionally stir through till they are soft. Switch the stove off and drain the mushrooms through a sieve while collecting the water in a bowl. Keep both aside for later use.

Make a roux of the butter, wheat flour and mushroom water (see below the steps on how I make a roux). Add back the mushrooms, 1 stock cube, pepper, and stir through. If you want to make it a fine mushroom soup, at this point you can use a stick blender to blend it and then add the bigger slices of mushroom as a decoration (make sure you have simmered them as well and kept separate after that).

Serve with French bread or garlic bread.

How to make a roux
Melt the butter in pot, till it is yellow and has small bubbles.
Take a tablespoon and scoop in a spoon of flour. Stir it through and make sure there are no clumps forming. Keep adding another spoon and stir and repeat this till the butter has merged with the flour into a ball (it is never a very nice ball for me, but something like in the next picture).
Take a soup ladle full of the mushroom water and  add it to the mixture. Slowly stir it through, and then add the next ladle full of water and keep stirring. It will slowly become a chewing gum like texture until it gets into a smooth paste and finally it is a saucy mixture.


If you are making a roux for a sauce, then stop here and don't add more liquid, but if you are making a soup, at this point add the rest of your water and stir it so that it is a nice smooth soupy texture (use your feeling to see how watery you want the soup to be).

Then add the rest of the ingredients to your soup.

Instead of water you can use milk as well (e.g. to make a Bechamel sauce).

Apologies for the bad quality pictures, it was in a steamy pot with a phone camera and the light behind me, so the shadows is yours truly!