Soup

Mmm Mmm Good Mushroom Soup

~ Lynn ~ 14 Comments

My family and I spent the long weekend in Vermont. Every year my aunt and uncle invite us to their cottage for Thanksgiving dinner. They provide us with an incredible meal, and we bring the pie.

For years my parents rented a cottage that was just a few minutes away. The area is surrounded by water and woods. My mom would often come back with chanterelle mushrooms. This year I decided to go with her, and before we new it we had a whole foraging party.

Foraging for mushrooms is sort of like looking at those pictures that look like nothing, but if you cross your eyes a certain way an image pops out at you. (Does anyone remember what those are called?) At first it seems like there is nothing there, but the next thing you know there are mushrooms everywhere.

Unfortunately the chanterelles were not in abundance. We weren’t able to identify any of the mushrooms we did find, so nothing was kept. Mushrooms are not something to take chances with. Despite not finding anything useful, I still had a great time walking in the woods. I haven’t spent that much time in there since I was a kid.

I had hoped to find enough mushrooms to make a soup. Obviously that didn’t happen, so when I got back to Montreal I made my way to Atwater Market and picked up some chanterelles and criminis. It wasn’t quite the same as picking them myself but it was still delicious.

I used a recipe from Mark Bittman’s How To Cook Everything. One of the good things about not having a computer for a couple of days was that it reminded me I actually own cookbooks.

Cream of Mushroom Soup

  • 2 ounces dried chanterelle mushrooms (optional)
  • 2 tbsp butter
  • 1 pound fresh mushrooms ( I used crimini and chanterelle), cleaned, trimmed and sliced (reserve a few slices for garnishing)
  • Salt and pepper to taste
  • 2 tbsp minced shallots
  • 1 garlic clove, minced
  • 3 cups stock
  • 1 cup cream (you can use heave cream or half and half)
  • Chives for garnish
  1. If using dried mushrooms, rehydrate them by covering them with hot water and soaking them for 15 minutes.
  2. Place the butter in a large deep saucepan on medium heat. Once the butter has melted add the mushrooms and increase the heat the medium high. Cook for about 10 minutes until the mushrooms start to brown. Drain the now soaked mushrooms (keep the liquid) and add them to the cooked mushrooms. Season with salt and pepper.
  3. Add the shallots and garlic and cook for one minute. Add the stock and reserved soaking liquid. Bring the mixture to a boil. Turn off the heat.
  4. Stir in cream. Garnish with chives and mushroom slices.

Enjoy!

Pear and Butternut Squash Soup

~ Lynn ~ 15 Comments

September is a weird month for me. It makes me hope the summer will go on a little longer, but at the same time it has me craving fall foods likes soups and stews. The cooler weather over the last couple of days made it a great time to make a soup. I still had a few pears so I decided to adapt Martha Stewarts Pear and Autumn Vegetable Soup, from the Oct 2006 issue.

I loved the idea of adding pear to the vegetable soup, but I was a little surprised that Martha called for water instead of broth. I also thought the soup could use a little more flavour so I added some sautéed onion as well. The soup is wonderfully satisfying and warming on a cold rainy day. There are a lot of steps in the recipe so it’s a little time-consuming, although most of it is unattended. You can skip the pear garnish and replace with pumpkin seeds, but it does make the soup very pretty. You can also skip roasting the squash and just peel and dice the squash instead.

Pear and Butternut Squash Soup

  • 5 medium pears
  • 1 butternut squash
  • olive oil
  • 1 medium onion, diced
  • 1 L low sodium chicken broth (or homemade)
  • 1/2 tsp sage
  • salt and pepper to taste
  • 2 tbsp heavy cream
  1. Preheat oven to 200 degrees. Slice one pear very thinly, using a mandoline.  Place slices on a parchment paper lined baking sheet and bake for 1 hour till slices are dry. Set aside.
  2. Heat oven to 400. Slice the butternut squash in half, scoop out the seeds. Drizzle with olive oil, and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast for 1 hour. Once done, scoop the squash out of the skin.
  3. Peel and core the remaining pears. Cut them into large chucks.
  4. In a soup pot, saute the onions until translucent. Add the pears, squash, and broth. Bring to a boil, season with sage, salt and pepper, then lower the temperature and simmer for 45 minutes.
  5. Let the soup cool a bit, then use and immersion blender to puree. Stir in the cream.
  6. Serve soup with sliced pears as garnish.

Enjoy!

I’ll be submitting this to Cream Puffs in Venice for Magazine Mondays. Check out what everyone else has been up to!

Spicy Chickpea Tomato Soup, a Magazine Monday Production

~ Lynn ~ 2 Comments

I’ve been reading food blogs (kind of obsessively) for a while now. I’ve stumbled across (and drooled over) posts from the Daring Bakers, the Tuesdays with Dorie people, and of course Dorie herself, oh and David too. I started reading them during my first sugar-free challenge as a way to vicariously satisfy my sweet tooth. Reading the descriptions of the foods and seeing all the beautiful pictures (see Tartelette) I felt like I was actually tasting all of the wonderful creations.

After a discussion of mojito cupcakes, my baking buddy cousin sent me this link with what she called the best looking recipe she’s found. The recipe sounds delicious (and is still on my list of things to make). So I decided to check out the rest of the blog. It turns out the author is one of the founders of the Daring Bakers, and she’s also come up with something called Magazine Mondays. Magazine Mondays were created as a way to go through all those magazine recipes we’ve got bookmarked but never actually get around to making. Every monday (well in theory every monday), you pick a recipe from the pile and tell the world about it.

I think it’s a great idea, and so I’m hoping on the bandwagon.

My first Magazine Monday Recipe is from the November 2007 issue of Martha Stewart Living. The switch from hot to kinda of coolish weather last week had me craving soup, so I made one of Martha’s.

Spicy Chickpea Tomato Soup

  • 2 cloves garlic
  • 1/2 tsp chilli powder
  • 1 tsp ground coriander
  • 3/4 tsp salt
  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 2 cups chickpeas cooked (or 1 can)
  • 1 1/2 cup canned crushed tomatoes, including the juice
  • 1/2 cup drained jarred roasted peppers
  • 3 1/2 cups chicken broth
  • sour cream or yogurt for serving
  • chives or parsley for garnish

Directions

  1. In a food processor pulse garlic, chili, coriander and salt into a paste.
  2. Heat oil in a medium-sized pot and add garlic paste. Cook until softened.
  3. Add chickpeas, tomatoes, peppers and broth. Simmer for 15 minutes. Let cool slightly
  4. Using an immersion blender puree soup.
  5. Serve with a dollop of yogurt or sour cream and garnish with chives or parley.

I omitted the caraway seeds Martha calls for just because I don’t have any.

And I used chives from my “garden”.

They came back all by themselves this spring! (I took the picture at night to hide the horrible view from my balcony, I need to move!)

This is a very quick and easy soup. I actually found it tasted better the next day, the flavours seemed to have blended together a little more, probably because of the short cooking time. The peppers give the soup a little something extra, a very nice touch. The only issue I had was with the texture, maybe I didn’t puree it enough but I found the soup a little clumpy. I would definitely make this again.

Enjoy!