This recipe is based on Jamie Oliver’s Real Mushroom soup published in Jamie’s Dinners. Serves 6 people as an appetizer.

You can use a mixture of any wild or store brought mushrooms for this soup. I’ve been out for a few walks with the family picking the odd bag of autumn mushrooms as I go along. If you are lucky you might still find a few Late Fall Oyster or Brick tops although the season is mostly over now. The nice thing about this soup it that it has a good base of mushrooms without too much dairy or stock. The citrus from the lemon zest and juice or in my example the last of the summers pickled chanterelles, cut the richness of the soup nicely.

Ingredients

  • 1 small handful of dried boletes or other mushrooms
  • olive oil
  • 1.5lb of mixed fresh wild or store brought mushrooms, I used Late Fall Oyster (Panellus serotinus), Brick top (Hypholoma sublateritium) and Honey mushrooms (Armillaria mellea) , cleaned and sliced
  • 2 cloves garlic, peeled and finely sliced
  • 1 onion , peeled and finely chopped
  • 1 handful fresh thyme, leaves picked
  • sea salt
  • freshly ground black pepper
  • 2 pints of chicken or vegetable stock
  • 1 handful fresh flat-leaf parsley, leaves picked and roughly chopped
  • About 2oz Mascarpone cheese
  • 1 lemon
  • truffle oil, optional

Directions

  1. Place the dried boletes and other mushrooms, I used a mixture of dried boletes, black trumpets (Craterellus fallax) and lobster mushrooms (Hypomyces lactifluorum), in a small dish, add boiling water just to cover, and leave to soak.
  2. Heat a dutch oven nice and hot, then add a couple of table spoons of olive oil and the fresh mushrooms.
  3. Stir for a minute, then add your garlic, onion and thyme and a little salt and pepper.
  4. After a minute or so moisture will start to be released from the mushrooms. When you see this add half of the dried mushrooms, chopped up, and the rest left whole, to the pan . If the dried mushroom soaking liquid is clean and does not contain any grit add it to the pan.
  5. Cooking on medium heat for about 20 minutes until most of the moisture disappears. I scraped a spoon across the bottom of the pot to check.
  6. Add the stock and bring to the boil and simmer for around 20 minutes.
  7. Remove half the soup from the pan and purée with a Immersion Hand Blender or in a larger blender, then pour it back in, adding the parsley.
  8. Ladle the soup into bowls and add a teaspoon spoon full of mascarpone to the soup. Mix together the zest of one lemon and the juice of half of it, then spoon a little of this into the middle of the soup. In my case I added some pickled chanterelles left over from the summer instead.
  9. If you want to add an extra mushroom kick drizzle a few drops of  truffle oil on top.