It is mushroom season here in Champagne, France! This means that everyone is putting on their rubber boots and heading into their local forests to do some foraging! There are 5 main mushrooms that everyone here knows how to identify: cèpes, girolles, trompettes de la mort, pied-de-moutons, and morelles. Pharmacists are also trained to know these too, for those unsure of their harvest. This year was a very good year for foraging, with bumper crops all over the country. Of course, that means that shrooms will be on the menu for quite a while. One of my favourite ways of enjoying them is in my easy cream of mushroom soup, so I thought I would share my recipe.
But first, a little bit of my experience foraging below. It was my first time and I was lucky enough to go with a group of experts!
My friends and I got up bright and early the next morning to trudge through a nearby forest. Our friends, veteran foragers, lead the way to their special spot and we were off!
Cèpes are relatively easy to find because of their big size. But, you need to look carefully because they blend in with all the crunchy leaves underfoot. My first find was a cute, squat boletus!
To pick them, you carefully wiggle them out of the ground, then you trim off the bottoms to keep your bag or basket clean. You never cut mushrooms because the leftover stump will rot and kill the mycelium. No other mushrooms will pop up.
The most interesting mushrooms we found were yellow and red cèpes that turned blue (within seconds) when cut. Not only were they the most common ones we found, they are also perfectly edible!
France has a generous picking limit, so we were able to pick a LOT of mushrooms. Even though we were well within our limit, it was probably more wild mushrooms that I have ever seen in one place in my life…
You can probably imagine how long it took to clean all these! Obviously, it would be impossible to eat everything before they went bad. So we chopped up the mushrooms, made a fabulous Sunday lunch with roast pork and mushroom sauce, and divided the rest into bags. Some bags were to remain fresh. Some were frozen. The majority were dried.
The blue cèpes lost their colour once dried and turned brown like all the rest. I dried mine in the oven under low heat, with the door propped ajar, for 2h per batch (1 batch = 3 full oven trays!). I dried 3 batches. They were then jarred in sterilized glass containers.
My mushroom recipe uses a mixture of fresh and dried mushrooms. You can do the same, or use whatever is available in your pantry/fridge. I personally love using dried mushrooms because the water leftover from rehydrating ads extra flavour to soups and sauces! This recipe make 4 bowls.
Easy Cream of Mushroom Soup Recipe
INGREDIENTS
2 heaping handfuls of dried mushrooms
8-10 fresh porcini or button mushrooms, chopped
2 small onions (or 1 large), chopped
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
Enough hot water to cover mushrooms
1 heaping tsp dried sage
20cl heavy cream
20cl milk
2 knob of butter
Extra virgin olive oil
Low sodium vegetable bouillon cube
2 Tbsp flour
Salt & pepper to taste
Fresh rosemary sprigs (for garnish)
INSTRUCTIONS
- At least 30 minutes before cooking, put dried mushrooms into a bowl and cover with hot water. Make sure they are fully submerged.
- Heat pot on medium heat. Add a knob of butter. Once it melts and starts to bubble, add sprigs of rosemary and cook for around 1-2 minutes until crispy. Remove rosemary and set aside.
- Add onions and a little bit of olive oil to pot. Remove rehydrated mushrooms from bowl, setting aside leftover water, and add to pot. Also add the fresh mushrooms at this point.
- Keep cooling until onions turn translucent and mushrooms brown. Add garlic and cook for another minute until garlic is fragrant.
- Once cooked, remove from heat and put in a blender or food processor. Add a little bit of leftover mushroom water and blend until desired smoothness is reached. Personally, I prefer a little rustic chunkiness.
- In your pot, create a roux by melting your other knob of butter and adding flour. It should look like dough.
- Remove mushrooms from blender and mix with the roux. Crumble bouillon cube, sprinkle on sage, then whisk in the rest of the mushroom water (if any remains). Continue stirring while adding cream.
- Still stirring, add milk a little bit at a time until desired thickness is reached.
- To serve, ladle into a bowl and place the crispy rosemary on top. Sprinkle on salt and pepper to taste.
- Enjoy!