Photo by Tom Jelen
Provenance of Dish
I came up with this recipe out of my own head. After years of cooking and eating boletes, I made this soup for our Mushroom Club dinner for about 180 people and everybody loved it.
Recipe
Ingredients
For this soup I like to bake off a whole chicken, then strip all the meat off the bones and roast the bones again until nicely browned. I then use those bones to make a deep broth for the soup. The meat is reserved and added towards the end.
1⁄2 stick butter; 2 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil;
1 heaping cup basic mirepoix of celery, onion, and green pepper;
1⁄2-3⁄4 lb dried porcini mushrooms, rehydrated in your chicken broth, mushrooms squeezed out, and liquid reserved, mushrooms chopped;
1 small head or 8 large cloves roasted garlic, smashed up;
1 medium yellow onion, chopped; 1/8 tsp coriander;
Couple of thyme sprigs, leaves only; salt and black pepper, to taste; cayenne pepper, to taste; 1/8 tsp cardamon; 2 quarts deep chicken broth; 4 big carrots, rough chopped; some butternut or acorn squash, rough chopped; 1 quart cream; 1⁄4 tsp grated fresh nutmeg; pinch of clove; Meat from the chicken, chopped
Instructions
Melt the butter with the olive oil in a large pot, then add the mirepoix, and cook until tender. Add the mushrooms and continue to cook until the mushrooms and veggies start to brown. Add the garlic, onion and all the spices except the paprika, clove and nutmeg, and continue to cook until the onions soften. Add the chicken broth, rehydration liq- uid, carrots, and squash and cook, stirring regularly, until the carrots and squash are very tender. Then, use an immersion blender to purée the mixture to a smooth consistency. Turn down the heat and add the cream. Bring to nearly boiling—do NOT let it boil hard—then turn off the heat. Grate the nutmeg into the soup, then stir in the pinch of clove and the chicken meat.
To garnish, sautée some fresh slices of porcini until they’re just begin- ning to brown. Float a porcini slice on top of each serving and dust with paprika. Serve with hot, crusty, buttered bread.
Garnish with a slice of Porcini browned and sprinkle with smoked paprika, as pictured.
