Cream of Mushroom soup

Ingredients

• 750 grams or so white mushrooms
• 4 small - medium onions
• 3 cups chicken stock (or vegetable stock for a vegetarian version)
• 1 1/2 cups milk
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1/2 cup white wine
• 3 tablespoons butter
• 2 tablespoons flour
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• Salt and white or freshly ground black pepper to taste

Preparation

Melt the butter in a pot. Add the onions, and after a few minutes, as they begin to get transparent, add the mushrooms. This should almost fill your pot. Have no fear, they get smaller. Simmer for a few minutes, mixing occsionally.

Gently stir in the flour. Make sure to continually stir, or you'll get lumps. Don't add big lumps. Just sprinkle lightly on the surface while stirring, and it'll mix in nicely.

Add the stock, and leave on a medium-low flame for about 20 minutes. Stir occasionally. You don't need to boil it, but keep it hot enough for the tastes to mix. Add the milk and the wine, and cook for a couple more minutes.Now that you've added the milk, don't let it boil. Take about 1/2 - 2/3 of the soup and put it in the blender. Puree it finely, and return it to the pot.

Cook for a few more minutes and add the cream, the nutmeg, the white pepper and the salt. You'll need enough salt (at least half a teaspoon) to bring out the flavour. I like adding white pepper because it doesn't disturb the colour of the soup. You can add black pepper if you want.The soup should be nice and thick. You want a thick soup, otherwise it could just as well be called milk of mushroom soup. If it's not thick enough (the flour should have been enough), leave it to simmer a bit more.

Keep on a low flame for about 5 minutes, while mixing, and serve.

You can garnish with a spoon of sour cream and chopped parsley.

• 1/4 c. butter
• 2 c. milk
• 1 c. water
• 1 lb. portabella mushrooms, chopped (I use the "baby bellas")
• 3 cubes chicken or veggie boullion (if you think this will be too salty, add one at a time)
• 1/2 c. grated mozzarella
• 2 T flour
• 1/2 to 1 onion (depends on the size and how much you like onions- I use the big yellow sweet ones.)
• salt (I use Lawry's Seasoned Salt)
• white pepper
• garlic (i use the already-chopped-in-oil kind, a heaping teaspoon of it, but we're garlic people)

Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup is used in the United States as a general utility food to help glue simple casseroles together.

For example: if you combine one can of Cream of Mushroom soup with one can of tuna and one bag of slightly firm egg noodles in a casserole dish, cover it with a crusty topping, and bake for 45 minutes at 350 degrees, you get a tuna noodle casserole.

Or you can take slice up 5 or 6 potatoes, and mix with a pound of cheese and a can of the aforementioned soup. Add the crust and bake as above and the result is Potatoes au Gratin.

The general rule is: a Starchy food + a flavor + one can CoM soup + a crust = a casserole. The condensed soup provides everything that is necessary to hold the casserole together and adds to the general creaminess. The crust can be a number of substances. My mother always used Italian breadcrumbs, but I have also seen crushed potato chips used for this purpose.

All these foods are simple enough for a bachelor but make enough food to feed a family. This makes Cream of Mushroom soup a good choice for the kitchen emergency shelf.