Chanterelle Soup

Ever since a certain well-known company beginning with K sent me a gift set of its ready-made soups, then took offence when I posted a photo of them on the Facebook fan page asking whether they wanted me to stop cooking, I have rather lost my appetite for soup. Besides, apart from traditional clear broth, one of the few soups my little daughter eats, I associate soup more with winter, or perhaps autumn, when you really need a proper warming meal 🙂

But yesterday Konrad (a mate from work) told me about a party he is preparing for his parents. And out he came with this chanterelle soup. Suddenly I wanted some. Unbelievably badly. Sometimes something acts like a fuse, an instant impulse to act.

So that evening I went to Lidl (the world’s most expensive shop, 100 metres from my home, had chanterelles, but priced like 5 kilos of fresh Argentinian beef fillet 😉 and bought 200 grams of fresh chanterelles for 12 złoty. Today I got down to making it. And here it is. A fantastic, wonderful, aromatic chanterelle soup, with quite a lot of cream, yet fairly light in flavour. I love chanterelles, I love the taste of dill and fresh, fine chives. I recommend it with every fibre of my being. I have already eaten 2 bowls. Oh, you have to try it.

Recipe details:

Preparation time: 40 minutes

Serves: 4-5 portions

Calories: oh, it may be soup, but it isn’t light

Ingredients for chanterelle soup (the mushrooms :):

• 200 grams chanterelles (you can use 100 grams more; they will only add to the soup’s aroma)
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 50 grams butter (vegans leave this out and use more olive oil instead)
• 200 grams of 18% cream for soups (vegans replace it with whatever they use instead of cream 🙂
• 2 vegetable stock cubes
• 5 medium-sized new potatoes
• 2 medium-sized young onions
• 2 cloves young garlic
• fresh dill
• fresh chives
• half a teaspoon turmeric
• freshly ground black pepper
• crushed black pepper with coriander
• salt
• half a teaspoon sugar

Recipe for wonderfully aromatic chanterelle soup:

I washed the chanterelles very thoroughly and dried them with kitchen paper (do this, or you’ll have sand between your teeth ;).

I melted the butter with the olive oil in a frying pan. I diced the young onions and fried them over a low heat. I added the crushed, thinly sliced garlic. I added half a teaspoon of sugar and stirred everything in the pan.

I diced the potatoes finely and added them to the frying onions. I waited 2 minutes and added the chanterelles. I fried everything for a few minutes. I added a little salt, the pepper with coriander and the turmeric. I stirred.

In a saucepan, I dissolved two stock cubes (vegetable stock) in a litre of boiling water, then added the contents of the frying pan to the boiling stock: chanterelles, potatoes, onions and garlic with seasonings, all fried in butter and olive oil. I simmered over a low “flame” (on my induction hob, 4 on a scale of 1 – 10) for 15 minutes, then added finely chopped dill and chives. I stirred.

I poured the cream into a bowl, stirred it and added the soup to it 2 – 3 tablespoons at a time to temper it. In total, I added about 15 tablespoons of soup. Once the cream was tempered, I slowly poured it from the bowl into the saucepan, stirring the soup all the time. I cooked it for about another minute and took it off the “flame”. The aromatic chanterelle soup was ready. Enjoy!

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