Friday Fungus: Hungarian Mushroom Soup (with some soda bread)

This week The Mushroom Channel - that must read/watch/listen for the serious fungi fan - featured a Hungarian mushroom soup from an American food blog, 'For the Love of Cooking'. We decided - or rather Kathryn, who is a better soup cook than me, decided - that with a tweak or two this would make a great lunch dish. Maybe with some soda bread (we use Nigel Slater's pretty foolproof recipe) - which comes out like this:

All very good but you need to know about the tweaking to the soup recipe! Since we didn't have a whole pound of mushrooms (let alone 8oz of white and 8oz of brown mushrooms) we had to make use of the dried stock - a handful of dried wild mushrooms and a handful of dried porcini did the trick. And, even better, soaking these in hot water provided a great basis for the stock - topped up with some good chicken stock this made for a really strong mushroom flavour.

Further, since we didn't have any soured cream (funny what one doesn't keep in store), we needed an alternative - provided by the remainder of the buttermilk used to make the soda bread.

The result was a fantastic soup - joined with the warm soda bread for a great lunch!

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Friday Fungus: The soup that wasn't

I was going to make mushroom soup and then tell you all about it! But there has been a realisation that – as the 2010 soft fruit harvest approaches – we have reached the point where all the pans are being used for making jam.

So no soup. I was planning to make this Balinese mushroom soup with some shitake mushrooms and, as I’ve made some consommé, a lovely fresh soup with dried porcini and cardamom. The first is fiddly and complicated but the consommé is simple and tasty – making a really fancy looking posh soup for that all-important dinner party (not that I ever have any of those but I’m told that’s what we’re supposed to say when doing preambles for recipes).

To make the soup take some beef stock (or ‘bouillon’ as the fancy recipe books like to call it) – or make some beef stock – enough to serve the ravening hordes at your important dinner party. Take a big handful of dried porcini, crunch them up in you hands and drop them into the boiling stock along with 5 or 6 green cardamom pods. Simmer for about 30 minutes, add some black pepper and a little salt if needed. Serve in warmed bowls.

Pretty simple really – why faff about with fancy Balinese soups!

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The Friday Fungus: A mushroom poem...plus a simple soup.

This poem is a bit Sufi I think - about more than just mushrooms. At least judging by the last couple of lines!


Mushrooms by Sylvia Plath

Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly

Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.

Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.

Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,

Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,

Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We

Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking

Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!

We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,

Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:

We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot's in the door.

Lovely. And the simplest of soups? You'll need:

1 litre beef bouillon
Large glass dry white wine*
10oz fresh little mushrooms chopped into small cubes
Salt & pepper

Bring bouillon to the boil, add wine, add chopped mushrooms. Cook for about 15-20 minutes, salt to taste. Serve.

For an alternative you can use sherry but much smaller quantities (i.e. more stock less booze).

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