Recipe Mushroom and Walnut Soup

[Morning Glory]

I found dried porcini mushrooms! In Sainsbury’s in the middle of Bolton. I had to ask, and when I was shown where they were, they were about 12 inches from where the preserved lemons that I had to be shown only a week or two earlier had been. In fairness though, I was expecting the mushrooms to be in a jar, they were actually in a clear packet.


Anyway, I made mushroom soup yesterday, and it was lovely. No walnuts, no oil, no cream. The initial fry was done in a little butter but not much, and that clearly is the best thing to use with shallots and mushrooms. And I did use a dry sherry. The interesting thing is, when I blitzed it at the end (I remove it from the pan into a bowl to blitz it) I got a much thicker, stodgier result than I was expecting. I mean it was good and fine and smooth, but just far too thick to be soup. So I had a conflab with my wife about whether to use a little milk to thin it, but she said she would prefer it if I used stock. So I made a little vegetable stock and thinned it to a good consistency. The end result made four decent sized bowls of soup, and there was a very clear and very lovely flavour of mushroom. It was not at all too bold. I could get the sherry background, and it again had a gentle peppery background from white pepper. I thought it was a lovely bowl of soup, and I will definitely make it a couple more times before I ponder returning to the idea of adding walnut flavour. But next time I’ll add the stock earlier and hope to get to the right consistency when I blitz it. No photograph I’m afraid, I was a bit too wrapped up in the success of it and getting everyone to try it. The key thing, I think, is that it was a much darker colour than the first attempt, but that, of course, was to be expected.

That sounds just great! I will try it myself. Do you think that you could have used water rather than veg stock?

 

[Ken Natton]

Do you think that you could have used water rather than veg stock?

Yes, absolutely. That was what was originally in my mind, but the problem was adding it so late. If I add more water earlier in the process, then I'm more likely to get a homogenous soup rather than a watery result. The stock I used was not one of the more salty ones so it really didn't spoil the balance too much. But yeah, I think next time add more water after adding the dried mushrooms and the fluid they were in, and maybe simmer a bit longer. But that last result was pretty good, it'll have to be really very good to be any better, if you see what I mean.