Cream of Mushroom Soup

Hello. I'm so sorry for the prolonged absence, but here I am now, with a bowl of mushroom soup for you :) Honestly, it was Instagram..Yep, apparently, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+ are not enough for me T_T. Plus, the season of all sickness was here as well, fever and the gang, stomach flu, followed by episodes of throwing up..phew~ but we are okay now.. 

But, again, most of the blame goes to Instagram. It has that on the go thing, which is more convenient than blogging. I don't have to set up my tripod and camera, and spent hours doing the clicking, editing and writing. 

But naah...don't get me wrong, I love spending hours doing all the said jobs, it's just that time is not on my side..and I always have more important jobs to tend to. i.e. laundry, cooking, 'drama class' with Adam and other endless domestic tasks that doesn't deserved any highlight. Nyah kau.

We are starting to get busy with our house renovation and everything needs to be finalized by this month. Lots of stuff to be boxed, labeled, and thrown away... yikes Honestly, I haven't start on anything yet except throwing out some unwanted old make up stuffs from my dresser...he he Well, that's a good start, right... 

The renovation will starts as soon as Husband takes off for Germany next month. Another business trip for him. We are supposed to follow, but the trip had to be postpone until next summer :( It's the renovation works. I need to be here to supervise them.

The other main reason is the weather. The last time we went to Europe was 2 year ago, and it was super cold. The predicted temps for Germany and Paris are about +/-5 degrees C. November in Paris is going to be rainy and chilly. Did you remember our Korea trip last year? The one where Adam refused to wear his coldwear. Scary kalau dia buat hal macam tu lagi. T_T So with that, I think it's better for us to postpone it to next summer. 6-7 months away je pun. :P 

Okay, let's move on to the soup. This is the best mushroom soup I've ever made. Period. The soup is a perfect balance of velvety creamy and intensely mushroomy taste, with subtle hint of herbs at the end. Everybody in the house digged it. I paired it with garlic bread and it was epic! The recipe is from Smitten Kitchen's Balthazar's Cream of Mushroom Soup. So here's my version of it.

Cream of Mushroom

Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

What you'll need:

30 g of dried mushroom -I used dried premium shiitake

3 cups of hot water

1/4 cup of olive oil

Instead of using fresh herb, I chose to use a teaspoon of Tuscan dried herbs (consists of rosemary and parsley)

1 medium onion, diced

2 cloves of garlic, minced

500g of fresh shiitake, sliced or diced.

2 cups of chicken stock + 1 cup of hot water + knorr chicken cube

1 cup heavy cream

2 tablespoon butter

Salt and ground pepper to taste

Way of doing it: 

Soak the dry mushrooms in 3 cup of warm water for 20 to 30 minutes, until plump. Strain the soaking liquid through a coffee filter to remove grit and reserve, along with the reconstituted mushrooms, until needed.

Heat the olive oil in a large pot over a medium flame. When the oil is hot, add the onion, garlic, salt and pepper and cook for 5 minutes, until the onion is soft and translucent but not brown. then add in the dried herbs.

Turn the flame to high and add shiitakes Cook for 10 minutes, during which the mushrooms will give off their liquid (which should evaporate quickly due to the high heat) and deflate significantly. Stir occasionally.

Add the chicken stock and the dried mushrooms along with the soaking water.Simmer for 30 minutes. Then add the cream and butter. Working in batches, puree the soup in a blender until smooth. Return to the pot and keep at a very low simmer until ready to serve.

Oh btw, I'm in the mid of renovating this blog as well.. and as you can see, the disqus comment area is invisible right now, due to its font color. I'm trying to fix it right now. You can leave comment as usual. :)