Friday, October 19, 2012

Wild mushroom + garlic and Madeira



  • First, eliminate all possible desire to make a pun using the word mushroom.
  • Fry a selection of mushrooms in butter. Season.
  • Once the water they have produced has been sucked back up/evaporated and they are starting to colour, add sliced garlic.
  • Add a good glug of Madeira and let it bubble.
  • Pour in some white wine and a little water, bring to the boil and then add parsley and cream :)
  • Let everything intermingle on a lively heat whilst sporadically dipping in the end of your baguette (this is not a euphemism).
  • Whiz.

What did it taste like? Richly earthy and satisfyingly creamy with a hint of sweetness from the booze.

Tips: 
  1. Fresh wild mushrooms will be grubby. Do not worry. Rinse them. You may have heard terrifying stories about combining funghi and H²O, but really, don't fret. You are going to add water anyway because it's a soup so let's use a little common sense shall we? Rinse, shake and just get on with it.
  2. You can use frozen mushrooms if you know a good quality supplier. This should be less expensive than fresh and will avoid you needing to clean them at all. They will however produce an abundance of water as they cook though, so I suggest draining it off, letting them fry then adding the mushroom water back in at wine stage.
  3. Try some regular mushrooms with a little porcini if a whole bag of wild ones is out of your budget this month. 
  4. You could replace the Madeira with Sherry or another fortified wine. My friend Linda says white port!

3 comments:

  1. This looks so, so good, Denise! I love mushroom soup. So very much. And I haven't had it in a year. . .

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  2. Denise: I am eating this soup with my eyes -- as we say in Brazil. This recipe is definitely a keeper and the picture is simply pretty. Kudos!!!

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  3. Just to let you know this dish made the list of the 25 mouthwatering dishes from different blogs in From Brazil To You...

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