Arne's food and wine blog: Fall Wild Mushroom Soup

One of my favorite soups, but one that has to wait until mushrooms are plentiful and cheap. This recipe is actually a combination of two of James Petersons recipes from his “Splendid Soups” book with very little modification.

Made this tonight since the Thriftway had wild chanterelles on sale for 4.99/lb. These were obviously wild harvested since they had a lot of pine needles in them.

This soup comes together quite quickly at the end, so I would recommend prepping everything beforehand in prep bowls before starting, otherwise something is going to get overdone while waiting for prep.

Serves 4

Soup Base (Mushroom Veloute)

1 medium sized onion finely chopped (about 1 cup)
4 TBs unsalted butter
1 TBs olive oil
3 TBs all-purpose flour
1 QT chicken stock
1/2 Cup Madeira or DRY sherry (don’t be tempted to sub cream sherry)
1 lb +/- cremini mushrooms cleaned and roughly chopped
1/4 lb chanterelles cleaned and roughly chopped **
1/4 lb portabellos cleaned and roughly chopped **
1 TBs dried porcini mushrooms **
1/2 cup cream or half and half
salt and pepper

Garnish

Sliced portabello and sectioned chanterelle mushrooms. Enough for 2-3 pieces each for each serving (4)
olive oil
salt and pepper

** Chanterelles and portabellos are both used for the garnish. Base total amount of mushrooms on combined requirement. Use the stems and sides and unattractive parts for the soup base, reserve the good parts for garnish. Other wild mushrooms can be added/subbed for more interest. Fresh porcinis can be used instead of dried but they are usually very expensive.

Start the the dried porcinis soaking in the Madeira or dry sherry. If you have neither you can use dry vermouth in a pinch like I did tonight. These need about 20 minutes so time accordingly.

Prep the rest of the ingredients, making sure you have some good looking slices of the exotic mushrooms for garnish. Keep these dry.

Prepare a veloute by sautéing the chopped onion in the butter and olive oil. Sauté on medium heat until translucent stirring almost constantly to keep from any browning, about 10 minutes. Add flour and sauté another 5 minutes to cook out the starchy flavor.

Add the broth and prorcinis and Madiera, bring to low simmer for about 5 minutes. Add the roughly chopped mushrooms reserving those for the garnish. Using an immersion blender, blend up all the mushrooms until smooth. Reduce heat and add cream or half and half. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Keep hot but not simmering. (Note that you aren’t “cooking” the blended mushrooms, the soup base is done at this point.)

In a medium hot pan with olive oil, brown the garnish sliced mushrooms, turning once. Make sure the pan is hot before adding mushrooms and not to crowd the pan so the mushrooms brown and not stew. Do in batches if necessary. Season with salt and pepper. Reserve to a hot plate.

Serve soup in bowls immediately, garnished with the browned mushrooms.

(The original recipe called for adding a persillade to the browning mushrooms for the garnish. A persillade is a mixture of minced shallot, garlic and parsley. You will see this in the pictures below. I didn’t feel this added anything to the soup, was very hard to keep from burning and added a level of complexity at the end that was a pain.)

The Thriftway was having an “open house” sale today (guess they didn’t want to call it a Veterans Day sale) and part of the deal was 4 bottles of wine for 15% off. Got some 2008 Corvidae Rook (made by Owen Roe) which is a wonderful sub $15 CMS red blend.

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Mushrooms prepped and ready