Mushroom Soup

Well, Its winter time in Rotterdam and all i crave for is soup every evening. Back in India as i mentioned in my posts before that mom used to prepare almost every evening. i had trained my maids with various recipes.

this is the first time i ever made mushroom soup. i have bought pumpkin also, shall try making pumpkin soup tomorrow... So i googled for cream of mushroom soup. read several recipes. the one which seemed more promising to the taste i was looking for was http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/cream_of_mushroom_soup/.

All the ingredients were at home, so life is easy, i don't have to look out for any ingredients out in such winter... yeah!!!

I changed was the source of the stock used in the recipe. being veg. I substituted the chicken stock as mentioned in the recipe with veg stock. I had put milk instead of cream, so of course the consistency differed, and added 1 tbsp of cream in the end. My soup was little less thick as compared to what the recipe suggests.

And also, had 250 gms of mushrooms as against the recipe states the measurement of ingredients as per 500Gms of mushroom, so i halved the measurement of other ingredients accordingly!

Ingredients:

250 gms regular white mushrooms, cleaned, quartered or sliced

1/2 Tbsp lemon juice

1/2 Tbsp unsalted butter

1 Tbsp minced shallots

1/2 tbsp chopped fresh thyme or 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme

1/2 bay leaf

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon fresh ground pepper

1 cups Milk

3/4 veg. stock ( i used maggie stock cubes)

1 teaspoon cornstarch dissolved in 1 Tbsp water

1 tbsp cream

Minced parsley for garnish

Method:

1 In a food processor, coarsely chop mushrooms and lemon juice.

2 Melt butter in (4-5 quart) sauce pan and lightly sauté shallots on medium heat. Add mushrooms, thyme and bay leaf, sauté over moderate heat for 10-15 minutes, or until the liquid that is released from the mushrooms disappears.

3 Add salt, pepper, milk and stock and bring to boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes.

4 Add cornstarch and simmer for 10 minutes and cream, stirring constantly.

Correct seasoning and add more lemon juice to taste.