Hearty Mushroom Soup

The two weeks of the moms' visit were a total interruption of life-as-we-live-it. This isn't a bad thing, it's just that regular activities like grocery shopping, cooking, laundry, and sleep were completely thrown off their routine course because our schedule and priorities were just different. Unrelated to this our trip to Paris and the alignment of the holidays meant that we went about 2.5 weeks without a vegbox delivery and at the other end I come out with three different kinds of mushrooms in the fridge and almost no meat or other essential ingredients for making a regular dinner. 

Remember this soup from Estonia that made Tallinn one of our favorite stops on our tour?

Well, I recently found a recipe for hearty mushroom soup that made me think I might be able to recreate it. I have never been a fan of creamy mushroom soup. It is probably the monotonous, smooth texture of a pureed soup that I don't like because I'm not keen on split pea or tomato soup either. The version we had in Tallinn, however, was broth-based, giving it a clean texture. Being able to actually see and identify the different ingredients, including several mushroom varieties, vegetables, and chunks of potato made the soup seem healthier and more satisfying than the flat, brown oneness of creamy soup. 

This soup got Joe's highest food rating (can we have this once a week?). Even though the recipe says it makes 4-6 servings, we could've easily polished it off in 3. The flavor was rich and bold, with strong but balanced flavors of rosemary, wine, and fall vegetables. I chopped most of the mushrooms as directed, but I did some in slices to add dimension to the texture. 

Ingredients

• 25g pack porcini mushrooms
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 medium onion, finely diced (I only had purple onions. I did one smallish purple onion and one medium shallot)
• 2 large carrots, diced
• 2 4 large garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 1 tbsp chopped rosemary, or 1 tsp dried
• 500g fresh mushrooms, such as chestnut, finely chopped
• 1.2l vegetable stock (from a cube is fine)
• 5 tbsp marsala or dry sherry
• 2 tbsp tomato purée
• 100g pearl barley
• grated fresh parmesan, to serve (optional)

carrots, onion, and the larges mushrooms all from Abel & Cole

chopping: stage 1

chopping stage 2

Method
............................................................................................................

1. Put the porcini in a bowl with 250ml boiling water and leave to soak for 25 mins. (I didn't have porcini mushrooms, but I assume they are working with dried. I did this step even though all of my mushrooms were fresh just in cases.)
2. Heat the oil in a pan and add the onion, carrot, garlic, rosemary and seasoning. Fry for 5 mins on a medium heat until softened.
   
3. Drain the porcini, saving the liquid, and finely chop. Tip into the pan with the fresh mushrooms. Fry for another 5 mins
   
4. Add the stock, marsala or sherry, tomato purée, barley and strained porcini liquid.
   
5. Cook for 30 mins or until barley is soft, adding more liquid if it becomes too thick.
6. Serve in bowls with parmesan sprinkled over, if desired.

We finished the first batch so quickly that Joe even offered to go to the store for more mushrooms so I could make another batch the next day. (On this batch I'd run out of tomato paste and just made it without. It was still very tasty.)