Poor Richard’s Almanac

Souper bowl Sunday. February 7, 2010

Posted by ourfriendben in homesteading, recipes, wit and wisdom.
Tags: cream of mushroom soup, homemade mushroom soup, mushroom soup
trackback

Silence Dogood here. Like many of you, our friend Ben and I got hit by the major snowstorm sweeping up the East Coast, accumulating deep drifts and dropping temps down to, as I write, a balmy 18 degrees F. outside. Things don’t feel much warmer inside our delightful 56-degree cottage, either. Looking outside makes me feel cold. Being inside makes me feel cold. What to do? Make some lovely hot soup, of course! But what sort of soup to make?

Usually, if I’m in the mood for soup, I make my locally famous black bean soup, or my luscious Curried Pumpkin Soup, or my homemade cream of tomato soup, or my spicy and warming Ginger Snap Soup. (You can find all these recipes by searching our blog using the search bar on the right, and I promise they’re all really good.) But today, I want to invent a new soup. A souper bowl soup.

To get inspiration, I of course turned to my cookbook collection. But yikes, where to begin? With over a hundred cookbooks, it’s easy to get overwhelmed (gee, what a horrible problem). So I decided to go for the executive decision solution and just grab three that seemed promising: Anna Thomas’s The Vegetarian Epicure Book Two (I love her unabashed decadence), Jack Czarnecki’s Joe’s Book of Mushroom Cookery (from the famous restaurant in nearby Reading, PA; mushroom soup certainly sounds appealing); and Brother Victoire-Antoine d’Avila-Latourette’s Twelve Months of Monastery Soups (hey, this cookbook is actually about soup!).

Checking them out, I was disappointed to see that Anna Thomas didn’t list a mushroom soup among the delicious soup recipes she offers. But she did have something  I find almost as intriguing: What appears to be a vegetarian French onion soup. Hers is called Beer and Onion Soup, and she suggests topping it with hot paprika or toasted croutons and grated Parmesan rather than the traditional slice of baguette and lusciously gooey melted cheese, but still. I can’t help but think that this might be the salvation of vegetarians like me who still miss French onion soup after lo these many years. Cream, dark beer or stout, egg yolks, and butter add body, and the spicing looks perfect. It’s definitely on my to-make list, but not today. I’m still on a quest for perfect mushroom soup.

Joe’s doesn’t disappoint. The restaurant, famous for generations for its wild mushrooms and game, has a number of delicious-looking mushroom soups, including Wild Mushroom Vichyssoise. I have to try this sometime, but I’ll eat it hot: I enjoy chilled soups, but there’s something about potatoes and mushrooms that makes me have to heat them. For me, the winning recipe here is Domestic Cream of Mushroom Soup. (“Domestic” because, for once, they’re not using wild mushrooms, rather than because the soup has been domesticated to the point of tedium.)

Unlike canned cream of tomato soup, which can actually be good if it doesn’t taste metallic and if you add lots of milk, butter, and salt, I’ve never been able to stand canned cream of mushroom soup. I suspect it’s because of the thickening agents, which affect both flavor and texture, so I was nervous to see 6 tablespoons of flour listed as the first ingredient in Joe’s recipe. The absence of any kind of stock, broth, or even water (except for 2 tablespoons of water to keep the onions and mushrooms from sticking to the pan) also seemed a little odd, and I couldn’t quite see the combination of dried savory and soy sauce as flavorings. Someday, I will make this and see how it is. Maybe it’s fabulous and my concerns are unwarranted; at any rate, a homemade cream of mushroom soup has to be a vast improvement over canned soup.

Moving on to the monastery, I see that the months of December, January, February, March and April all feature mushroom soups: Mushroom Soup, Mushroom Soup a la Marie-Louise, Country Mushroom and Sour Cream Soup, Saint Lioba Beer and Mushroom Soup, and Cream of Mushroom Soup a la Romaine. So many choices, and they all look worth trying, but none is the mushroom soup I have in mind for this bitterly cold, snowy day.

However, at least now I’m inspired. So, forthwith, here is what I’ll be making today:

           Silence’s Soupreme Mushroom Soup

1 16-ounce carton button mushrooms, minced

1 8-ounce carton baby ‘bellas, minced

dried shiitake and/or porcini mushrooms for deeper flavor, optional, or fresh shiitakes, minced

1 large sweet onion (WallaWalla, Vidalia, Candy, or 1015 type), diced

1 stick salted butter

6 large leaves fresh minced basil or 1 teaspoon dried basil

1 teaspoon fenugreek powder

1 pint light cream

1 carton veggie stock (in my experience, all brands are good)

Marsala or Madeira wine

bourbon

Trocomare (hot herbed salt) and/or salt (we like Real Salt)

hot sauce (we like Pickapeppa or Tabasco Chipotle)

Melt butter in a heavy stock pot or Dutch oven (I love my LeCreuset Dutch ovens).  Add onions and cook until translucent. Add Trocomare and/or salt to taste, a splash of hot sauce, fenugreek, and minced basil. Add mushrooms. Cook over low heat until mushrooms have released their liquid, stirring and adding veggie stock as needed to prevent sticking. When the mushrooms have cooked down, add the remainder of the carton of veggie stock and the cream, stirring well to blend. When the soup is hot, pour a circle of Madeira or Marsala around the edge of the pot, add a splash of bourbon, and stir. Give the soup 5 minutes, then taste and adjust seasonings. Let it cook slowly to the desired thickness and serve; eat very hot. You may choose to serve this soup over rice (we always suggest basmati rice) or with sides of rice, baked sweet potatoes, mixed green and yellow wax beans, and a salad. It should serve four for single portions, or two if one of you is the ever-ravenous OFB and you want seconds (and possibly thirds).

Try it, and let me know what you think! And have a very happy, warm, and well-fed S(o)uper Bowl Sunday.

           ‘Til next time,

                       Silence