Wild Mushroom Soup, you’ll love this!

November 4, 2007 at 6:14 pm · Filed under Recipes: Soup

Oh, it’s the lovely mushrooms again! As promised in the previous post, here’s a yummy soup recipe. For those who adore mushrooms will love this to bits, well, not all, but at least for me. I literally wanted to lick my bowl clean. It was that delicious to me.

This is a wholesome thick soup for those who are watching their diet. Just replace the knob of butter with olive oil instead. But for those who can afford some fats in their diet, use butter, as it’ll be more flavourful. I read somewhere that adding potatoes will help thickened the soup, thus I omitted the cream completely. But if you like, you can add that dollop of cream during cooking, or simply just stir them in before drinking. If you can make your own stock, that will be even better. I used Knorr’s vegetable stock cube for the broth.

It was a virgin blend for my spanking new blender. I should have gotten a blender earlier to make soups like this. My next few soups will be something like, pumpkin soup, roasted bell peppers soup, etc.

I made some modifications to the original recipe, basically replacing certain ingredients. This recipe is definitely a keeper.

Wild Mushroom Soup
Recipe adapted from Gourmet Food at About.com
Serves 2 to 3

40g butter
1 medium shallot, peeled and diced
250g fresh mushrooms (I used Portobello, white and brown button), sliced
600ml water
1 vegetable stock cube
1 potato, medium size, peeled and diced
1 tsp dried parsley
1/4 cup white cooking wine
salt and pepper, to taste

Add the butter to a large pot and melt over medium heat. Add the shallots and cook until soft (about 5 minutes). Add the mushrooms and cook for another 5 to 7 minutes. Add water, stock cube, potatoes and parsley. Add white cooking wine.

Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and cook for about 15 minutes.

Puree the mixture in a blender or food processor. I leave about 200 ml of mixture un-pureed, so that I can get to eat the mushroom chunks. Return mixture to the pot. Season with salt and pepper, and stir. Enjoy it with toasted bread.

Comments (11)

Watercress Soup for a Heaty Me

September 18, 2007 at 5:45 pm · Filed under Recipes: Soup

Feeling heaty? How about a bowl of hot piping watercress soup? Watercress Soup (西洋菜汤) is a cooling soup suitable for hot and dry months. It’s one of the soups I grew up with. And now I cook this quite often as watercress is easily available and is one of B’s favorite soups. Best of all, I can share the watercress with my syrian hamsters. Oh, and they like the red dates and wolfberries I add to the soup too.

Watercress is loaded with iron, calcium, folic acid, vitamins A & C. The westerners use watercress in their salads. So I thought they must have taste good raw. So while preparing food for my hamsters, I pick a stalk of leaves and stuff them into my mouth and munch. Eww.. it’s bitter and weird for my liking. I can take arugula(wild rocket), red coral leaves which are of peppery taste but not watercress. They probably taste better tossed with the right salad dressing. I guess I better not attempt to eat like my hamster. lol

Here’s a tip when using pork ribs for all your soups or dishes. You need to blanch them before hand for a good 5 to 10 mins. This will get rid of all the dirt and awful grey-colored foam which you will find floating on top of the water. Then you rinse the pork ribs before putting them into your soup.

If you do not like pork, you can replace them with chicken pieces with skin removed. Else the soup will be too oily with the chicken skin on. If you want to go meatless, then replace the water with chicken or vegetable stock. You may want to omit the salt then. And if you like your watercress crunchy like I do, follow the steps below. Else just throw in all the watercress in step 4.

Watercress Pork Rib Soup
Serves 2
Watercress (西洋菜), one bundle
800ml water
200 gm spareribs, rinsed and scalded with boiling water
½ tbsp dried wolfberries (枸杞)
6 dried red dates (红枣)
Salt to taste

1. Wash and rinse watercress, cut off the stems and separate them from the leaves.
2. Wash red dates and wolfberries.
3. Pour water into a pot and bring to boil.
4. Add red dates, wolfberries, pork ribs and watercress stems into the pot.
5. Simmer over low heat for about 30 to 40mins.
6. Add salt to taste
7. Before serving, add the remaining watercress into the soup for about 5 to 10 mins.
8. Serve hot with rice.

There will be MORE soup recipes coming up.

Comments (11)

A Japanese Fare

July 3, 2007 at 6:32 pm · Filed under Recipes: Soup

Having Japanese fare at home is pretty rare. Apart from buying some salmon belly sushi, the most common and easy dish I can whip up is the Japanese curry rice using the premix curry cubes. It’s like a one pot meal, no fuss at all. Add some carrots, onions, chicken and potatoes, cook some rice and it’s done. I thought of frying some tempura and croquette, but that would means having to clean up a lot harder after that. Not good. Hee.

Miso (味噌), a fermented soybean paste, is high in protein, rich in vitamins and minerals. A little miso goes a long way - no wonder the Japanese old folks are known for their longevity - they have a cup of miso every morning to start the day.