We love soup at our house, but it's usually difficult to agree on which type to make because I prefer thick, creamy soups and G would rather eat broth-based soups. Not because he doesn't like thick, creamy soups, but because those use cream and that means miserable headaches and congestion for someone with a dairy allergy.
So, just like I did with this dip and this one, I tried to come up with a way to get what we both want out of a dish. Forget compromise, I'm all about looking for the win-win, when it comes to food!
Here's what I came up with to create a thick, creamy soup that we both can enjoy:
What You Need:
8 cups of mushrooms
1 sliced onion
A handful of garlic cloves (...or two...we love garlic!)
A splash of coconut oil
Salt
Pepper
8 cups of water
1 teaspoon thyme
4 chunked potatoes (whatever non-sweet potatoes you have on hand works)
2 chunked sweet potatoes
1 cup wine (your favorite type - we used Cabernet Sauvignon, because that's what we had open)
At least 1 Tablespoon lemon juice
What You Do:
1. Begin by roasting the mushrooms, onion, garlic, and all the potato chunks in the oven. I ended up dividing it all between two 11x15 glass baking dishes. Drizzle a little (maybe a Tablespoon-ish?) coconut oil over everything and then sprinkle it all with salt and pepper. Stir each glass dish a bit to coat everything in oil and then stick it all in the oven for 30 minutes at 400 degrees. Stir everything again halfway through, to ensure even roasting.
2. When the roasting has finished, dump the contents of the baking dishes into a pot along with the water and thyme.
3. Pour the wine into the glass baking dishes to help loosen all the browned bits of goodness from the pans. Once you've scraped up all you can, pour it all into the pot with the rest of your ingredients.
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| Pre-blending stage |
4. Use an immersion blender
to mix everything up. You could also use a regular blender to do this, but you'd have to do it in batches and the immersion blender is way easier.5. Add lemon juice, a Tablespoon at a time, along with some more salt. You're going to want to just add both of these, stir it up, then taste and repeat, until it's as tangy as you want it.
If you want an exact-measurement recipe to follow that will produce identical results every time, then this soup is not for you. This dish is best for experimenting with - for adding more mushrooms when you got a bunch on sale and more potatoes when you can't find a good mushroom deal.
And you have to taste it. A lot, especially if you want to get just the right zing of lemon juice.
But isn't sampling the best part of cooking?
Does the thought of playing around with a "recipe idea" give you the jitters, or are you more of a "dash & pinch" kind of cook? I'd love to hear - leave a comment or email me at lisahealy (at) outlook (dot) com.
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