We’re Back With Mushroom Soup!
Wow, we really needed that break for Thanksgiving. We hope it was cool at your house. We hope you felt good. We felt pretty OK.
And it was only a little weird at our mom’s house, where, for some reason, the family eschewed mashed potatoes for scalloped potatoes as if that’s OK and not wack as hell. In all seriousness, we were feeling pretty lucky to be a live and warm and fed, but we’ve still been longing for mashed potatoes since.
In fact, have we ever told you about how one of our favorite easy-to-make dishes is creamy mushroom soup ladled out over mashed potatoes? It’s kind of gravy-adjacent, and it’s a pretty good meal for vegetarians. Hey, know what? Let’s actually get into that real quick—creamy mushroom soup served over mashed potatoes, complete with a recipe from our grandma. She grew up on a farm in Pennsylvania and could identify an edible mushroom from a mile away. And though she said “Darling, the recipe has changed slightly over the years,” we like to think the soul of this recipe was forged in the cold Pennsylvania winters. We’re also hopeful that we’ll get it together to do things like not writing only recipes soon. But who knows? Not us. Here we go:
Creamy Mushroom Soup
You’ll Need:
- 3 cups mushrooms you love (we’ve chosen a mix of portobello and porcini)
- 3 cups mushroom broth (which we’ll tell you how to make, too)
- 4 tbsps butter
- 2 minced shallots
- 3 chopped carrots
- 1/2 cup chopped onion
- 5 cloves garlic sliced as thinly as you can (“Not minced!” grandma shouts)
- 1/4 cup flour
- 1 cup white wine
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 2 tsps salt
- Ground pepper (to taste)
- As much chopped rosemary as you think you can handle
Makin’ the Broth:
- Remove the stems from your mushrooms then chop the caps and set aside for the main soup
- Toss stems in 3 1/2 cups water on medium heat
- Add carrots, onion, 1 minced shallot, 1 clove sliced garlic and some of that rosemary, then let simmer on medium low for a bit...like, 15-ish minutes
- Stir it good once or twice and then again at the end
- You’ll start to smell when it’s brothy
- Strain it and cover it, but don’t worry about keeping it super hot
Makin’ the Soup:
- Sautée the chopped mushroom caps with the butter, the olive oil and the minced shallot on medium heat for about 15 minutes or until you start to smell that glorious mushroom smell. Your mushrooms should be kinda soft
- Add your flour and coat the contents with continuous mixing (“It’ll seem too dry, but don’t worry,” grandma says)
- Once coated, slowly start pouring in the white wine and mixing. This’ll loosen things up, but just make sure it’s well-mixed
- Slowly stir in the broth now, stirring until you’ll visibly see you’ve got something like soup going
- Slowly add the cream, stirring, plus the rest of the rosemary, the salt and some ground pepper—you’ll know the texture is right when it looks all creamy and thick and amazing
- Mix well, then turn to super-low heat, cover and let simmer for a bit, maybe stirring once or twice to keep it interesting—grandma is adamant you never let this thing boil
Makin’ Mashed Potatoes:
- Literally chop up russet potatoes, boil them for, like, 20-30 minutes until very soft and then mash them with butter and a splash of heavy cream, maybe a little salt and pepper if you want, but with the soup? You won’t need it.
Now pour the soup over the potatoes and maybe serve a croissant or chunk of buttered french bread on the side. Voila!
The Fork would never make light of prison, but Paul Cicero (that’d be Paul Vario IRL, for those interested) vibes with grandma’s garlic scene.
Also
-Yeah, El Mesón closed alright. Too bad this kind of thing keeps happening, especially to local haunts run by champions like chef David Huertas.
-We wanted to let you know we popped by Plant Based Café the other day for some AMAZING vegan tacos. We wanted to tell you this, though, because we’re here to offer some advice to the ownership of this particular vegan establishment: Invest in a freaking boombox or something, y’all. The uncomfortable silence in your small dining room was matched only by the intensely delicious food you served, but no music made us and all the other guests really uncomfortable. This is, like, restaurant 101, too. Cool? Cool. You get music, we’ll come back. It doesn’t have to be loud or anything, just some background sounds. We’re begging you.
-The folks at Hidden Mountain Brewing Co. (formerly Blue Corn Brewing) released a new beer last week dubbed Without a Trace. The imperial stout is, according to a buddy who tried it, “Good as fuck,” and “worth it.” Pop by the website to learn more about the beers down there, and maybe think about how Hidden Mountain brewing poobah Paul Mallory is cool.
-We’re seeing a lot of post-Thanksgiving holiday menus popping up at nice restaurants around town, so our advice is that if you’re looking for a fancy-ass Christmas meal you don’t have to cook, start planning now.
-That Sky Railway Adventure Train from George “Really Rad” Martin, Bill “Violet Crown” Banowsky and Catherine “No Nickname” Oppenheimer is set to roll out this week (Dec. 3 is what we hear), and there will be food and booze and music and more. Here’s a website. Go. Or don’t. We’re not your mother.
-Speaking of Bill Banowsky and Violet Crown, find a newly updated food menu which includes the Nuckolls Burger and Nuckolls Double, items that seem to be mysteriously related to Banowsky’s Nuckolls Brewing Co., the in-progress new brewery that should be popping up sometime this spring in the Railyard. Anyway, you’ll also find items you already know on the menu, but given how things were pared back during the pandemic, this is kind of nice news.
-Lastly, in local stuff (since everyone was off for the holiday last week and not a whole lot has happened since then), we’d like to thank everyone who pointed out our typo in “minced onions” last week, as well as how eggs aren’t vegan. Setting aside how typos are the act of humans, and if you couldn’t extrapolate “minced” from “mined” then maybe you need to get your whole life together, the vegan thing was an oversight meant to include Just Egg, a vegan egg substitute. If it makes you feel any better, when these things happen they become pretty much all we can think about. It ruins our sleep and we feel so terrible that our stomach hurts. We know we joke a lot, but in all sincerity—nobody takes that stuff harder than us. NOBODY.
This is food-adjacent, right?
More Tidbits
-According to experts who spoke with USA Today, you can fully full-on eat too much during the holidays, and that’s OK. We like these experts.
-Eater-dot-com, being our favorite food website, has compiled a guide to helping folks during the pandemic. We think that’s pretty darn cool. You could even start here at home by donating things to a food bank people would actually want to eat. For example, plenty (if not too many) of folks donate boxed mac and cheese, for example, but not the milk that makes it so delicious. Think on that. Check the guide, too.
-BREAKING: We found a website that has “mined onion recipes,” so...
-Jimmy Fallon spoke to the folks at Bon Appétit about tea parties and such. No word on whether he looked into the camera sheepishly or was unable to complete a comedy sketch without breaking into laughter. God, we hate Jimmy Fallon. And we know what you’re thinking—”Why include him?” Because we’re an enigma, dear readers.
-That ought to about do it for this week. We’re easing back in. Plus, while we were compiling that recipe from up there, the internet died at work and ate up about two hours worth of work. Yeesh.
brianna@sfreporter.com
Check out those beautiful orange and olive turkeys made by reader Sasha M., who says our history of weird-ass Thanksgiving foods inspired them and their friends. Fun! Way to go, Sasha! We love them so much.
A Totally Scientific Breakdown of The Fork’s Correspondence
In this week’s print edition of SFR, we kicked out some mini-reviews from our last Restaurant Guide. They all sound amazing, and you can find a huge directory of local eateries here.
Number of Letters Received
33
*That sucks for two weeks!
Most Helpful Tip of the Week (a barely edited letter from a reader)
“I actually kind of hate you.”
*We actually kind of hate us, too.
Actually Helpful Tip(s)
No tips, really, but one reader from Los Angeles praised our vegetarian/vegan (if you use Just Egg) stuffing recipe, so we’re down with them.
*Down!
___________________________________________________
Stuffed,
The Fork
