Cream of Mushroom Soup

Saturday's mornings here in Eindhoven mean trips to the farmer's market.  When we lived in Italy, the year round farmer's market near our apartment was a every other day adventure for me and weekends were left to the big farmer's market in the center of town (many claim it's the largest open air fresh market in Europe, but I'm not sure about that).  Anyway, at the Eindhoven market we've been pleasantly surprised by the mushrooms and for a few weeks were buying up as many shitake mushrooms we could find and adding them to our pasta with tomato sauce (likely to be it's own post!).  Last week, the shitake's seemed past their prime, so we moved onto the cremini mushrooms, purely chosen for the scrumptious looks. Since I was feeling burned out on the mushrooms with pasta and tomato sauce combination, I decided to reach back into my 'vault' of starred recipes and make a cream of mushroom soup, adapted from this recipe.  I did not make a vegan version, but honestly it's on my list to try the vegan version (not because I aspire to be vegan, but because it sounds good!)... I will let you know how it turns out!

By the way, I think this soup would make a fantastic opening dish for Thanksgiving dinner... we're thinking of adapting it into our usual menu, but only time will tell if that happens :P

Cream of Mushroom Soup  (adapted from Joy the Baker, a blog I highly recommend you add to your reading list)

Ingredients: 

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium yellow onion, chopped
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 pound cremini mushrooms, cleaned and sliced
1 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce 
coarse ground black pepper
3 cups vegetable broth
salt to taste
3/4 cup half and half or cream (check blog link for vegan instructions)

1. Chop a medium sized yellow onion and mince 3 cloves of garlic.

2. Wash 500 grams of cremini mushrooms and slice. 

3. In a large pot, warm 2 tablespoons of olive oil on medium-high heat.

4. Add onions and saute in oil until translucent and slightly browned. 

5. Add garlic and saute for 1 minute. 

6. Add sliced mushrooms, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce (do not skip the soy and Worchestershire - the aroma is heavenly!), and black pepper and allow the mixture to cook for 5 minutes. 

7. Next add 3 cups of vegetable broth and allow the mushrooms to cook at a simmer until tender when stabbed with a fork. Approximately 10 minutes, but the best way to judge in my opinion is with the fork.

8. Once cooked through remove from heat. Using an immersion blender, blend the concoction. Alternatively you can use a food processor, check blog instructions for how to do this.

6. Add 3/4 cup (or as much as desired) of cream as much as  to the mixture. I added less than 3/4 cup (eye-balled it) since 3/4 cup seemed like a lot, this is a personal taste, how much creaminess to mushroom-ness you like.

The blog indicates to strain the soup to remove the clumps from the soup, but I prefer it clumpy so it was served like this.

I hope you try this recipe, it's fantastic!