40 Soups - Mushroom

This week I made mushroom soup for the first time. I didn't follow a recipe (I rarely do for soups) I just thought about what I would like to do and went ahead.  It isn't the cheapest soup to make because it required a whole pack of mushrooms, but was very very tasty.

I used:
One pack of organic chestnut mushrooms,
One large organic onion,
Three cloves of allotment garlic,
One kallo chicken stock cube,
1 tbs organic olive oil,
A dash of organic double cream.

To begin I chopped the onion and garlic and fried it in the olive oil.  I then chopped the mushrooms and addded them till they went soft and watery.  Next I added enough water to cover the mushrooms plus a bit more and added the chicken stock cube.
After cooking for about 15 mins I blended the whole thing and added the cream.
Served with crusty white bread it was absolutely delicious and tasted just like a bought fresh mushroom soup.
What soup recipes do you love?

40 Soups - 1. Spicy Lentil

A few months ago, a lovely lady from one of the blogs I follow, Elise Blaha, posted a series of recipes entitled "40 Loaves" where she baked 40 different bread recipes, blogged about each of them and included recipes for each.  After finishing this project she decided to embark on a new one.  Initially she thought "4 Soups" would be a fun idea, but she realised her husband didn't enjoy soups and thought the project wouldn't be so much fun to do alone, so instead she decided to a project called "40 pizzas"!  I however LOVE soups and make them often, so I thought it would be a really fun idea to blog about each of them and give you a recipe and photo to go with.

My first soup for this series is Spicy Lentil. It is a great recipe to make if you don't have much in the way of fresh veg in the house and good for tight budgets. Plus lentils have loads of wonderful vitamins and minerals.  The recipe serves 2 and I am afraid that (as with all my recipes and tutorials) measurements are approximate!  So I will leave you to be the judge when it comes to quantities and you can take my numbers as a guide.

Ingredients:
1 tbs olive oil,
1/2 onion,
1 clove garlic,
1 cup red lentils,
1/4 tsp ground corriander,
1/4 tsp paprike,
1/4 tsp ground cumin,
1/4 tsp chilli,
1 chicken stock cube,
600ml boiled water.

Chop the onion, and garlic and fry in a little olive oil in a large sauce pan, when softened add the lentils and fry for a couple of minutes. Add the stock cube and water and sprinkle in the spices. Stir to mix everything together.  Cover and leave until all the water is soaked up.  Continue to add water until you achieve a pleasing consistency and the lentils and cooked soft. Take out half the soup and blend, add back to the mixture and stir together.  Serve with toasted wholemeal bread and butter.  Perfect, thick warming and tasty.

The most revolting looking soup ever

So today we went for a lovely walk in some woods near us, the weather was glorious, so warm and bright, there was not a cloud in the sky, I always find walking in the woods like healing, I feel totally refreshed and revived after getting fresh air and sun on my skin.

Along the way we gathered lots of sweet chestnuts from their spikey jackets, it was bliss shuffling through the autumn leaves picking up and admiring the shiny smooth skins of the chestnuts in the glorious sun, some had fine silken hairs on them, like these:

When we got home I chopped some onions, garlic, celery and squash, added a stock cube and water, then boiled up the sweet chestnuts.  After cooling the chestnuts I spent about 45 minuted peeling the flaming things and I now have a very sore thumb.  The result was this absolutely disgusting looking soup, my husband names it spooky soup because it looks like something you might serve on Halloween!

Yes folks, your eyes are not deceiving you, you do not need to adjust your screens, that is in fact grey soup!

It was tasty though!