Paris Mushroom Soup {FFwD}

January 7, 2011 at 6:57 am (Around My French Table, Cooking with wine, Dorie Greenspan, French Fridays With Dorie, Mise en place, Techniques, Uncategorized)
Tags: Around My French Table, Dorie Greenspan, French cooking, French food, French Fridays With Dorie, garlic, Immersion blender, mise en place, Mushroom salad, Mushroom soup, Mushrooms, onion, Pureed soup, Sautee, Soup, sous chef, Stick blender, White wine

At French Fridays with Dorie we’re starting off the new year with the perfect recipe for those wintry January days. I love soup, especially when it’s cold outside. I’m not sure why I don’t make it more often, especially since so many soup recipes, like this one from Around My French Table, are so easy to put together.

Preparing to cook included little more than chopping vegetables and measuring out the remaining ingredients. The most time-consuming part was cleaning and slicing the mushrooms. If you really wanted this soup to be almost effortless, you could start with sliced white mushrooms. Starting with whole mushrooms, it still only took me about 15 minutes to get everything ready. With my mise en place completed, it was time to make soup.

I began by sautéing onions and garlic in butter.

Or rather, my sous chef sautéed them.

After the onions and garlic had softened a bit, we added the mushrooms and cooked them down until they gave up their liquid.

We continued cooking the mushrooms until the liquid had mostly evaporated. Then we added white wine and cooked it away, too. Finally, we dropped in rosemary and parsley, then poured in chicken broth.

We brought the broth to a boil, covered the pan, and simmered the soup for about 20 minutes. We — or rather, I, as my sous chef had gone off to play by then — uncovered the pot, moved it off the heat, and broke out the immersion blender to purée the vegetables.

 With the soup ready to go, I prepared the salad, which consisted of mushrooms, scallions, parsley, and chives.

I assembled the salad in the bottom of shallow soup bowls, then ladled the hot soup onto the salad.

I served the soup with a dollop of sour cream. The recipe called for crème fraiche, but the grocery store didn’t have any, and I hadn’t thought ahead to make it. No matter, as the sour cream worked just fine.

This soup was perfect for a chilly winter Sunday supper. My sous chef, who claims not to like mushrooms, even liked it. Actually, that was part of the reason I had her help me cook it. I’ve found that kids are more likely to try — and like — a dish that they have helped prepare.

As for the rest of us, we loved the soup, too. Everyone finished their bowls, and I went back for seconds. The soup was creamy and delicious, and the salad gave it a bit of added flavor and texture.

 This is definitely a recipe I will make again. And it has me thinking I should make homemade soup a regular part of my winter dinner rotation.