Mushroom, Celery and Garlic Soup

Last Monday I said that this week’s soup would have pasta in it. I lied.

I have chosen a nice sounding pasta soup (with an ingredient in it I had never heard of before - oooo), but that’s now coming to you next week instead.

Funny story – I glanced at the recipe for this week’s soup before going to the grocery store for ingredients. Good to know note number 1: pay more attention to the recipe before you shop. I went shopping for and bought 4 and half pounds of mushrooms when the recipe actually called for 4 and a half cups. That’s roughly 6 times more mushrooms than I needed.

Good to know note number 2: you can return mushrooms to the grocery store.

Mushroom, Celery and Garlic Soup

A robust soup in which the dominant flavour of mushrooms is enhanced with garlic, while celery introduces a contrasting note.

Ingredients

Serves 4

350 g/12 oz/4½ cups chopped mushrooms

4 celery sticks, chopped

3 garlic cloves

45 ml/3 tbsp dry sherry or white wine

750 ml/1¼ pints/3 cups chicken stock (I used veg)

30 ml/2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce

5 ml/1 tsp freshly grated nutmeg (mine wasn’t freshly grated)

salt and freshly ground black pepper

celery leaves, to garnish

1 Place the mushrooms, celery and garlic in a pan and stir in the sherry or wine. Cover and cook over a low heat for 30-40 minutes until the vegetables are tender.

(I was pretty sure I’d read this wrong. Only 3 tbsps of liquid – I thought this had to be an error and was sure the vegetables would stick to the bottom of the pan! I was super wrong. The mushrooms release so much liquid that this step doesn’t even need you to stir periodically.)

2 Add half the stock and purée in a food processor or blender until smooth. Return to the pan and add the remaining stock, the Worcestershire sauce and nutmeg.

(I used my hand blender and didn’t even take the soup out of the pot. Dead easy.)

3 Bring to the boil and season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve hot, garnished with celery leaves.

This soup was ridiculously easy to make and tasted really lovely – 4.25 out of 5. We dunked some crispy tortillas in, but garlic bread would be really nice too. And p.s., this soup was from - you guessed it - The Soup Bible.