Homemade Mushroom Soup

Serves 4-6

Most of us are very familiar with the household brand, Campbell. It’s famous for its soup-in-a-can or in-a-sachet that requires almost no cooking skill to prepare. All one needs is a pot or a cup, add hot water and voila, mushroom soup (or other variants) that’s loved by all—young or old.

Most people that I know of, are under the impression that it’s rocket science to make mushroom soup. The truth is, with few fresh ingredients, the soup is so much easier to make from scratch; and a good bowl of mushroom soup goes a long way in warming the body and soothing the soul.

An essential cooking tool that helps preparing the soup is a blender. I like to use a hand-held blender to prepare this because I can blend the soup in the pot and control the consistency of it to my liking, plus there are fewer parts to wash compared to the traditional blender. If you do not own or have one, don’t worry, simply chop all the mushrooms as finely as you possibly could, and the soup will be served with rustic presentation and charm.

I usually use three types of mushrooms to make this soup because each type of mushroom has its own unique nutty flavour, so meddling different variation of mushrooms results in a robust and flavourful soup. Do try out this recipe with any type of mushroom you can source from local market such as enoki, brown, porcini, chanterelle, portabello, etc and try to avoid using canned mushrooms, if possible.

So, here’s my very simple version of homemade mushroom soup that is easy and oh-so-much-fresher-and-better than any of those store bought’s. This is for my dear cousin, who requested for this recipe. Hope you and your family enjoy this just as much as I do. Bon appetite!

Ingredients

2 tbsp	Olive oil or other vegetable oil
1	Large red onion, chopped finely
3 cloves	Garlic, minced
1 stalk	Celery (optional), ribs removed and chopped finely
100 g	Oyster mushroom, chopped
100 g	Shiitake mushrooms, chopped
100 g	White button mushrooms, chopped
½ cup	White wine (optional), if not available use chicken stock
1 sprig	Fresh thyme, or 1 tbsp dried thyme
2 cups	Chicken stock
1 cup	full-cream milk
	Salt and pepper to season
	Chives or parsley, chopped finely to garnish

Directions

1.	At medium heat, drizzle the oil in a heavy-bottom pot (stainless steel preferred), add onion to sauté until tender, add garlic to continue sauté until the aroma is released.
2.	Add in the celery and stir constantly until tender, add the mushrooms, continue sautéing them. When the mushroom are completely mixed with other ingredients, close the pot with a lid and let the moisture from mushroom release (about 3 minutes).
3.	De-glazed the bottom of the pot by pouring in the wine, mix well. Add in thyme.
4.	When the liquid is reduced, pour in the stock slowly and let it simmer in low heat for 15 minutes.
5.	Turn off the heat, add in the milk, mix well. Let the soup come to room temperature, use a blender to pulse until the soup is smooth or to any consistency you prefer. Season with salt and pepper.
6.	Garnish the soup with chopped chives or parsley, serve warm.

Organic Russian Borscht

The first time I've ever seen and tried this soup in US, I was thinking: boy, is this soup red or what??? But once I had my first sip, I fell in love with this Russian beauty. It's full of earthy flavour of root vegetables and packed with beautiful hues of red and magenta colours.

Typically, this soup is prepared in Russia in the winter due to the availability of the winter root vegetables such as carrots, beets, purple cabbage and potatoes. But luckily in Malaysia, we have them all year round, so sourcing for the ingredients is not a problem.

This is the first time I have ever made Russian Borscht, so I really wanted to make it nice. To give the soup extra flavour and nutrition, I used all organic produce. As I was seasoning the soup, I was reminiscing the original taste when I first tried it 8 years ago (Wow... it has been this long, huh?).

The borscht is SO GOOD that I can have it EVERYDAY!!!

Turned out, it was exactly as how it tasted! I was pretty satisfied with my first attempt and will definitely make it again and again.

Dill sprigs and generous dullops of sour cream were served with the borscht. To my very very own surprise, even Adrian (who was initially intimidated by the colour of the soup) loved it and asked for more!

So, here's my organic Russian borscht recipe for you readers out there who would like to try this exotic soup:

Ingredients:

1L water

500 mL vegetable or chicken stock

1 organic carrot, finely chopped

1 organic red bell pepper, deseeded, finely chopped

2 stalks organic celery, cut cross section

1 large organic beet, finely chopped

6 organic tomatoes, finely chopped

3 organic potatoes, skin peeled, finely chopped

1 organic yellow onion, finely chopped

½ organic purple cabbage, julienned or shredded

½ cup olive oil (hearty) or melted butter (sinful)

1 tub sour cream

8 sprigs fresh dill weed

ground black pepper to season

sea salt to season

Procedure:

1. In a large pot, add water and stock with finely chopped carrot, bell pepper, celery, beet, tomatoes and potatoes. Bring it to a boil, then turn the heat to medium.

2. In a frying pan, sauté onion and purple cabbage shreds with melted butter (hehe… I am sinful when it comes to food) until the cabbage is slightly cooked (about 5 minutes), then turn to medium low heat.

3. Then, pour some stock from the large pot to the frying pan, let the stock cook the cabbage for another 10 minutes.

4. Return cooked cabbage in the stock in the frying pan back to the pot and simmer the soup for another 30 to 45 minutes.

5. It is ready when your kitchen is filled with great smell of the hearty vegetable soup.

6. Season the soup with pepper and salt

Serve it with fresh dill weed and generous dollops of sour cream (it’s even better if crème fraiche is available in your area, substitute it with sour cream)

This borscht pairs perfectly with Sour Cream, Chive, Cheddar Cheese Bread