Cream of Mushroom Soup Redux

There's an old post with a recipe for cream of mushroom buried somewhere at the beginning of my seven years of blogging. Its tang came from crème fraîche, and it tasted good enough. However the consistency was not as pleasing especially after being defrosted which became watery and clumpy at the same time. A batch soup hostile to freezing isn't what batch cooking is all about. Through time, I conveniently forgot to make it. I always suspected the proportions of butter, flour, and stock was off hence the disappointing texture. After a little research, I tried different amounts of those ingredients which resulted in wonderful mushroomy flavour along with an equally wonderful creaminess that held up through defrosting.

Ingredients
around four to six servings, recipe can be doubled

• Mushrooms, fresh,  554 g (1 pound) I added a small handful of rehydrated porcini
• Onion, large, chopped
• Thyme, fresh leaves, 1/2 T
• Broth, chicken or veggie or dried porcini 'liquor' (I used a mix of half chicken broth and half porcini 'liquor'), 946 ml (32 fluid oz/1 quart)
• Flour, all-purpose, 5 T plus 1 tsp
• Butter, unsalted, 90 g (6 T)
• Heavy cream, 237 ml (8 fluid oz)
• Dry sherry or unsweetened apple juice (which I used), 4 T
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• Garnish: a few fresh mushrooms and crumbled blue cheese (I used Bleu d'Auvergne)

If using porcini whether for a mixture or the total amount of stock, pour boiling water over the porcini in a small bowl to submerge. Let sit around twenty minutes. Via a sieve placed over a large mixing jug, drain well. Put the porcini back in the small bowl and cover with fresh cool water. Sieve and drain again. Repeat until water runs mostly clear, making sure the sediment is caught in the sieve. Reserve the amount of the dark 'liquor' needed before its runs clear. Clean the fresh mushrooms by wiping them with a paper towel to get rid of any compost flakes. Usually there's enough moisture on the mushrooms so most likely the paper towel won't need to be slightly moistened. 'Srooms quickly absorb moisture, diluting their flavour so no running them under a free-flowing faucet. Thinly slice the fresh mushrooms. If large, halve them first and then slice the halves. For decades I use to go to the trouble of finely mincing them because a certain cookbook insisted on doing that for best flavour. They are actually more tasty when sliced.

Melt the butter in a heavy-bottomed pot, preferably a cast-iron one. Saute the chopped onion for around ten minutes or until soft, yellow, transparent, and fragrant. Add sliced mushrooms and the porcini if using. Sprinkle some salt and pepper, stirring from time to time for ten minutes. Add flour while stirring well until it is all incorporated. Pour in the sherry or apple juice and give it a good stir. Add the stock and the thyme and bring to a boil. Reduce flame and let simmer, partially covered, for twenty minutes.

Remove half the soup and blend smooth (I used a stick mixer). Pour the blended soup back into the pot and add the cream. Adjust seasonings. Reheat gently.

Slice some mushrooms thinly and float a few in each bowl. Top the slices with crumbled blue cheese. Don't tell the older recipe languishing forgotten in the dusty archives that this one is much better.

À la prochaine!

RELATED LINKS

Health benefits and nutritional content of mushrooms

Book Review / Inferior: The True Power of Women and the Science that Shows It by Angela Saini

Ms Saini's presentation despite being one of concise clarity manages to cover, and even more importantly, uncover much ground, providing for an exhilarating, informative read. In her introduction, she lights upon a point that on its own pierces centuries of fog by identifying the manner in which women are perceived. Their inferiority is whispered constantly and everywhere. Certainly this dismissive attitude can be loud and clear, even brutal at times; but to sustain such a direct disregard would be a taxing endeavour. Therefore the approach morphed into an omnipresent implicit bias.

The foggy pestilence is left to billow about because of the nonchalant attitude of well that's what science says even though that is not what science says. It obscures the truth from being seen, an inconvenient one of women being denied their birthright of equality. There's a cough there, a sneeze there, but the fog remains. Mingling with the miasma is yet another poisonous whispering, that there never was any intellectually vigorous analysis opposing the arbitrary proposition of women intrinsically having pared-down worth.

Challenging the notion of innate male superiority and corralling their righteous anger into brilliant and potent late-nineteenth-century rebuttals, women like Caroline Kennard* and Eliza Burt Gamble were ignored by science. Because women. Whisper, whisper. See how that fog seeps over everything a woman does? It stays put so well that an egalitarian society hasn't surfaced yet as women still are not spared from being sexually harassed/assaulted, still earn less pay for doing the same work as men, still not mentored as thoroughly as men hence making success into male-dominated fields beyond university graduation fraught with difficulties that has nothing to with their intellectual ability, and still not have complete control over their reproductive functions and of ones that they have, those human rights are under constant threat.

Caroline Kennard

Eliza Burt Gamble

What makes a woman a woman? Data collected from varied, large samples shows that though men on average are taller and have greater upper body strength, woman are more robust. Less males survive birth and stay alive longer.  Eliza Burt Gamble challenging the notion of the weaker sex in her book, The Evolution of Women: An Inquiry Into the Dogma of Her Inferiority to Man, had intimated as much when she wrote:

When a man and woman are put into competition, both possessed of every mental quality in equal perfection, save that one has higher energy, more patience and a somewhat great degree of physical courage, while the other has superior powers of intuition, finer and more rapid perceptions and a greater degree of endurance . . . the chances of the latter for gaining the ascendancy will doubtless be equal to those of the former.

Living longer may be a nifty evolutionary fitness edge, but nothing is free, especially in evolution. Women experience more pain because a physical price is paid when you are left standing while your male counterpart is resting quietly in a coffin. The female immune system is not necessarily stronger, but instead it is more flexible which is derived from being able to turn off the autoimmune response to the foreign body developing inside the womb.

The systemic curtailing of women's potential can be traced to when agriculture became entrenched. Due to a historic windfall, that is, basically luck, men were able to build societies catering solely to their needs. And with even more luck, white men could shape the world to fit them like a tailored-made suit. With hoarded inter-generational wealth, especially land, certain white men could lord it over even other men to the present spectacle of white, male billionaires who have never known an emotion they are able to regulate weeping on televised broadcasts because they might be taxed more appropriately.

For most of history, that is, before humans switched to an agricultural focus, women were able to acquire power by networking with each other. When I was a young woman in the 1970s I was fond of saying that the only reason why women were making advances (my goodness there goes a woman firefighter! Wow, a woman police officer!) was that such changes improved men's lives. That is, men allowed such changes after all it is their world. With increasing inflation, the single male earner household went out the window. It became advantageous to the family's financial health if the woman made more than she traditionally did hence some fields begrudgingly accepted female candidates as long as their pay was less. Of course she simultaneously would do unpaid housework as usual.

My observing as time passed allowed adding to this earlier understanding that at present the male power structure has sufficiently supported men pushing technological advances, of the kind, that unwittingly permits women to network easily and rapidly with each other, such as the Web. Women finding and amplifying their voices have not gone by unnoticed as the ever present backlash to #metoo and #TimesUp shows and by my own recent experience of a 'reply guy' wedded to the whispering style plaguing discourses on women's equality unashamedly insisting during an online discussion that the words 'patriarchy' and 'feminism' be not used as if not naming what exists and why it does somehow will erase magically what is problematically and egregiously extant.

Ms Saini discusses the extensive research on brain dimorphism in humans and concludes there is no significant evidence male and female brains are much different, but rather they are intersex, with a bit of both, of which the proportion varies from person to person creating an individual mosaic in each and every one of us. Yet researchers insist on looking for a biological holy grail which would overtake numerous, substantial studies underlining the longstanding inequality between men and women is caused by cultural forces.

This page-turning book which I hardly put down since I wanted to keep on lessening my ignorance as quickly as possible is one I highly recommend. The content is riveting in its detailed elaboration regarding women's supposed inferiority. Dr. Jess Wade's crowd-sourced fund secured enough donations for a copy of Inferior to be sent to each UK state school. You can be a crowd-sourced fund of one and give a copy to a friend or relative because it is an essential tool in promoting equality.

*Caroline Kennard wrote two letters to Charles Darwin, the first asking in disbelief that since a distinguished scientist couldn't be so wrong in believing evolution only made men productive and intelligent that perhaps his views have been misinterpreted. He replied women were passive and less intelligent because evolution didn't push them in that direction since women were unable to hunt and make tools. Her reply not surprisedly was written in a less neat script than the first. Fast forward a bunch of decades and there's evidence women probably made the first tools, created out of fibre such as slings to carry babies and baskets with which to forage and they hunted smaller animals sometimes with the help of dogs which brought in a more consistent food supply than men did with their larger game.

À la prochaine!

OTHER BOOK REVIEWS

Book review / The Golden Thread : How Fabric Changed History by Kassia St Clair

Book review / Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Warner Townsend

Book Review / Against Empathy by Paul Bloom

Book Review / The Tulip by Anna Pavord

Book Review / The Asshole Survival Guide: How to Deal with People Who Treat You Like Dirt by Robert I. Sutton

Book Review / Florike Egmond's An Eye For Detail: Images of Plants and Animals in Art and Science, 1500-1630

Book Review / Hot Bread Kitchen Cookbook: Artisanal

Baking From Around The World by Jessamyn Waldman

Rodriguez with Julia Turshen

Book Review/The Confidence Game: The Psychology Of The Con And Why We Fall For It Every Time By Maria Konnikova

Book Review / The Faith of a Writer: Life, Craft, Art by Joyce Carol Oates

RELATED LINKS

Dr Jess Wade at Twitter 

Angela Saini at Twitter

Inferior at Amazon

Iron Cookware Series: Tortillas De Tiesto

This fluffy, grilled, yeasted, lightly sweetened, Ecuadoran flatbread boasts of a buttery, milky, egg-rich gorgeousness replete with a good amount of whole wheat flour AND as if that was not already more than enough, it is stuffed with salty fresh cheese. Not that I would turn down milk and cookies on their own for a late afternoon snack, but if I had to choose between that old standby and these tortillas, warm off the griddle, paired with a cup of spiced tea, I would just have to reject les petites gateaux. Tiesto refers to the large, shallow clay pan that is traditionally used. A thoroughly seasoned cast-iron skillet is a worthy substitute, resulting in well-toasted tortillas. Depending on where in Ecuador, these can be made entirely with corn, or a mix of corn and wheat, or just wheat as in this recipe from Hot Bread Kitchen Cookbook by contributor Fanny Perez.

Ingredients
makes twelve approximately 10 cm (4 inch) diameter flatbreads

• Whole wheat flour, 455 g (3.5 American 8 fluid oz cups)
• All-purpose flour, 225 g (1.75 American 8 fluid oz cups)
• Sugar, white, 5 T
• Active dry yeast, 1 tsp
• Kosher salt, 1 tsp
• Whole milk, 340 g (scant 1.5 American 8 fluid oz cups)
• Large egg, beaten
• Unsalted butter, 225 g (16 T)
• Quesco fresco or Feta cheese (which I used)

If using a stand mixer, just put everything except the cheese in its bowl. Toss the butter in the flour and cut into small cubes. This way the floured butter doesn't stick to the knife. Start with low speed for about two minutes or until all of the ingredients have come together and then increase the speed to medium for about five minutes or until the dough is smooth and doesn't stick to your hands. If mixing by hand, measure out the first five ingredients and put in a large bowl. Measure out milk and crack the egg into a mixing jug and whisk until blended. Put the butter into the bowl and toss with flour, then cut in small cubes. Work the butter using your fingertips until the texture is like coarse sand which takes about five minutes.

Add the milk mixture, incorporating it with a large wooden spoon until it comes together into a shaggy dough

Knead until smooth which should take about five to ten minutes depending on your method. I use the spiral method which is how I learned how to knead large amounts of clay in my potter days decades ago. It's the quickest way to knead because your hands never leave the dough in order to turn it, instead it's rocked continuously on a pivot; unfortunately I have been unable to locate a vid showing how to do this. Here's a vid on the regular method. Cover with a damp tea cloth/dish towel (or plastic wrap/bag) and let rise around a hour. 

Divide roughly into twelve parts. Form into balls. Flatten them out into disks of about 10 cm (4 inches). Place them as they are done onto two parchment lined sheet pans. Keep them covered with a damp tea cloth (or plastic wrap/bag) as you work.

At first I thought that cutting the block of feta into squares would be neater and quicker than crumbling it and spooning out tablespoons. Unfortunately not only did I mistakenly cut more than the twelve needed, but the sharper edges and contained nature of a square meant the dough got torn a bit when pulling it over the cheese and the grilled tortilla did not have bits of cheese distributed throughout.

I switched to the cookbook's recommended method of crumbling and measuring out two tablespoons for each tortilla. Sprinkle the dough circles with cheese and pull up the sides to make a closed dumpling form. Form a ball and roll out a bit wider than before. Don't fret if you see some cheese poking through as feta does not melt much. You might hear a tiny bit of sizzling from time to time, but not much. Keep the filled tortillas covered with a damp tea towel/plastic wrap or bag as you work.

Grilling pancakes or flatbreads usually means the first one will be more miss than hit. After a few misses, the approach resulting in golden brown and fluffy tortillas instead of blackened and having the consistency of cooked cereal was heating the pan over a large-in-diameter, medium high burner until a few drops of water tossed into the skillet evaporated almost immediately, then placing the pan over a small-in-diameter, low flame. Once that is done, cook each tortilla for about fifteen minutes, flipping a few times. To test the degree of fluff, shielding your fingertips with paper towelling, squeeze the tortilla's top and bottom simultaneously to test for spongy springiness—no indentation should remain for long

My skillet only accommodated one at a time so when I reached the half-way mark, the dough balls waiting to be toasted were way more risen which I say were the best of the lot. Look at that fluff!

I love the pocked-with-white-cheese surface which I thought this silky, white ribbon showed to advantage.

They are truly magnificent, nourishing but still a bit indulgent. Coffee and hot chocolate also go well with them. Hot Bread Kitchen Cookbook recommends serving them with Ecuadoran spiced morocho, a sweet, warm, milky drink thickened with cracked white corn. There's a whole bunch in the standalone freezer waiting for me when the desire hits to pamper myself by defrosting a couple by popping them in a warm oven. YES to batch baking!

À la prochaine!

OTHER IRON COOKWARE SERIES POSTS

Strawberry Cobbler

Lemon Basil Garlic Smashed Potatoes

Roasted Salmon & Spiced Rhubarb With Fresh Pea shoots

Mashed Potato Cantal Onion Pancakes

RELATED POSTS

Raisin Challah a la Hot Bread Kitchen Cookbook

Bialys a la Hot Bread Kitchen Cookbook

Book Review / Hot Bread Kitchen Cookbook: Artisanal Baking From Around The World by Jessamyn Waldman Rodriguez with Julia Turshen

RELATED LINKS

Hot Bread Kitchen Cookbook at Amazon

Hot Bread Kitchen Website: Handmade Authentic Multi-Ethnic Breads, Preserving Tradition, Rising Expectations

Baked Turnip Chips With Olive Oil, Lemon & Blue Cheese

Turnips are wonderful. There I said it. I suppose if you are particularly sensitive to bitterness, then your snubbing one of the sunnier aspects of the autumn veggie patch, with their low-caloric content of vitamin C, potassium, fibre, folate, B6, and some trace minerals is somewhat understandable. But in general, as far as I am concerned, Baldrick was a person of exquisite taste.

If bitterness is a turn-off for you, then when choosing turnips, pick ones with a diameter of no more than seven and a half centimetres (three inches) because at that size (or less) they are more sweet. When the tops of turnips are exposed to sunlight, they turn violet as these from our potager have done.

Preheat oven to 205 degrees C (400 degrees F). Ingredients are in boldface. For four side servings, scrub and trim ten to twelve turnips. There is no need to peel. Slice thinly and spread in a single layer on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Sprinkle liberally with virgin olive oil, salt, and freshly ground black pepper.

Bake for around twenty minutes until soft and slightly browned. Dribble lemon juice and crumble blue cheese (I chose Bleu d'Auvergne) over all the slices and toss right in the pan. Pile in a serving dish and dust with a finishing salt like fleur de sel. Serve with lemon wedges.

Though this method brought out their sweetness, gratefully a pleasing note of bitterness remained. The five tastes, sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami, mingled together in this simple but elegant presentation resulting in contentedly satisfied eaters.

À la prochaine!

Autumn Advances

Days are becoming shorter and colours more sombre. Nearly two months of steady rain have also contributed to the lessening of light where it seems each day is just one premature, sustained gloaming. Semi-evergreen penstemon with their claret-coloured blooms are still going as they have been since early summer therefore making themselves especially valuable for smaller gardens like ours where every plant must work harder and longer in providing visual interest regardless what season. In larger gardens, the gaps resulting from short-lived displays don't dominate as much because there's always something of interest somewhere. Root veggies, planted just six to eight weeks ago, are getting closer to harvest. Their lush foliage is a welcomed contrast to withered and falling leaves, but I must say I enjoy the satisfying crunch of dead leaves underfoot!

Violet turnips are gleaming like huge amethysts. 

Carrots need another month to become mature.

But until then, the small, tender carrots which are thinned out to allow others to grow larger will have to do. And they do very well indeed when they are briefly simmered in butter and a bit of water. The water evaporates leaving the carrots with the most scrumptious glaze made by the butter and the sugar naturally occurring in these garden-fresh baby carrots.

The strawberry bed has put out many runners; twelve of them have been potted up in a recycled shallow container. The rest of the runners have been clipped and put on the compost so as not to choke the original plants' growth. Strawberry plants become less productive with each passing year, necessitating propagation every season. This coming spring, these runners will have developed enough roots to be transplanted into a bed which haven't had any strawberries planted for several years as strawberries are disease-prone and must be rotated. In early summer, four-year, hardly productive plants will be removed after harvest. As the bed empties through time, other crops are planted  Strawberries are worth all the trouble as our freezer can attest: container after container of slightly sugared, delectable berries waiting to be put into smoothies, cobblers, and more simply, served in their own syrup and dressed with vanilla-flavoured whipped cream.

Autumn is an excellent time for planting new arrivals and relocating existing ones. Sixteen laurel plants which came from cuttings of established laurels on our property were transplanted from their three-year-old nursery bed. I did one most days. The steady rainfall kept the soil at the right moisture level throughout the three-week period so not only the holes could be spaded easily but also sieved compost from our pile could be incorporated readily with the dug-up earth. The newbies will lengthen the existing hedge to completely flank the back garden's eastern boundary. The splendid but self-seeded and rather large rose of Sharon which has pressed itself against the fence presented a problem but my solution so far seems to be working. After digging a few trial holes, I could see no competing roots. I did give the bush's expansive branches a good pruning so I could work around it, digging and transplanting. The 'hedglings' are positioned around ninety centimetres (three feet) from the wire fence so as to allow an alley where I can go to clip and trim behind the hedge. 

Across the back garden, along the opposite boundary fence, the five Leyland cypress trees which were planted last autumn, mostly developed roots this season, reserving energy so they can grow an astonishing ninety centimetres (three feet) next year. They will fill in the space left by the much slower-growing ivy which has covered the majority of that fence and all of a cement wall. As with many serendipitous pairings, as the ivy became more and more of a background for the red rose already planted there I slowly realised that one of the most spectacular colour combos is a floriferous cloud of red roses being framed by a tall expanse of stalwart, dark-green ivy. The cypress will elaborate further on that theme.

The trees grew only thirty centimetres (one foot) this summer. But once they get going, they need at least four trims per year or else there will be a dark, brooding forest on that side! Therefore I use them very sparingly as they gallop away with growth before you can locate your shears. Since neighbours seldom appreciate being shrouded in gloom and gigantic trees are not able to be felled with clippers, it is not uncommon for these lovely trees to be the basis for legal disputes.

The potted bougainvillea has started to present their true flowers, tiny white blooms in the centres of gorgeous crimson sepals. That cheery yellow around the pot's base is provided by perennial snapdragons which have self-sowed in the cracked patio and have decided to perform a second show after their early summer debut.

Giant lavender which has been blooming since August is holding onto some of its flowers. A peony's burnished foliage complements the bluish spikes.

À la prochaine!

RELATED POST

Strawberry Cobbler

Single Serving, No-Bake Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookie

It's nice to make something special for just you. This cookie is delicious and takes about ten minutes to do from start to finish. The oats and peanut butter pushes it to the healthy side by providing a needed boost of long-lasting energy.

The ingredients are few and are all pantry staples (from Lindsay Maitland Hunt’s Healthyish cookbook via Food52)

• Peanut butter, natural, creamy, 2 T
• Oats, quick-cooking or instant, 2 T
• Sugar, Icing/confectioner's, 1 tsp (regular sugar can be buzzed in a food processor till it becomes powdery)
• Vanilla, 1/4 tsp
• Chocolate chips, semi-sweet, 1 T
• Fleur de sel/flakey sea salt, a sprinkling

Using a fork, blend the first four ingredients until the mixture forms a stiff paste. 

With your fingers, form it into a thick disk and put on a small plate lined with parchment paper. The parchment paper allows transferring it to another plate if desired. Also it seems to me that it helps the bottom of the cookie to firm helping it to hold together. Score down the centre with the tines of a fork. Put in freezer for around five minutes.

Meanwhile measure out the chocolate chips and put in a ceramic bowl.

Place bowl in microwave or over boiling water in a pot on the stove. Stir once or twice as the chocolate melts. I don't know about you, but I find melting chocolate extremely relaxing. And that delectable fragrance whets the appetite!

Spoon over a half of the cookie or the whole surface if you prefer (that way you get a bit of chocolate with each bite!) If it doesn't set on its own, put it back in the freezer until the chocolate becomes solid. Peel off the paper.

Don't forget to sprinkle the fleur de sel before serving! Though it doesn't have the alluring fragrance of a baked good or can't be dunked into coffee, it was an excellent treat. I forked off chunks which stay together enough to be handheld and popped into my mouth. The creaminess along with some crumbly crunch coupled with the contrast between salty and sweet makes this cookie a delight. Its cold state plus not having to turn on the oven was welcomed here in southwest France as the days are still quite warm. 

À la prochaine!

RELATED POST

Microwave Molten Mudcake in a Mug (only three ingredients!)

Iron Cookware Series: Strawberry Cobbler

Cobblers tend to be two different kinds, one closer to cake, the other more like a crumble/crisp but with a biscuit/scone topping; I prefer the former. Years ago I made a cake-like cobbler, but in the upside down manner using a regular baking dish, that is, the melted butter and berries went first, then followed by the batter. For this present one, I am using the opposite method, first the melted and very hot butter, then the batter followed by the berries. This way, with the help of the cast-iron, the bottom surface also becomes carmelised as well as the regular browning on top, hence simulating a double crust. Though this cobbler can be made with fresh strawberries, I opted to use some from our garden's frozen bounty.

Ingredients
made in a 10 inch skillet; 6 ample servings or 8 regular ones

Cake Batter

• Flour, white, 16 T (1 American 8 fluid oz cup)
• Sugar, white, 12 T (3/4 American 8 fluid oz cup)
• Baking powder, 1 1/2 tsp
• Salt, 1/4 tsp
• Egg, 1 large or medium
• Milk, whole, 8 T (1/2 American 8 fluid oz cup)
• Crème fraîche or sour cream, 4 T (1/4 American 8 fluid oz cup)
• Vanilla extract, 1 tsp
• Butter, 2 T
• Strawberries, fresh or frozen & sliced in syrup, .7 litre (3 American 8 fluid oz cups)
• Cream and strawberry coulis for serving

Preheat oven to 177 degrees Celsius (350 degrees Fahrenheit). If using fresh strawberries, hull, rinse, and slice. Toss in two to three tablespoons of sugar. Let sit for around ten minutes or until juice is formed. Drain off most of the juice and reserve for later use as a coulis. If using already sliced, frozen berries, let thaw a bit and then drain and reserve syrup. Put first four ingredients in a mixing bowl. Stir until blended. Place the next four ingredients in a jug and mix with a wire whisk. Pour the liquid ingredients into the dry. Stir with wooden spoon until smooth. Melt butter in skillet till hot and bubbly, but don't let it brown. Pour in the batter. Top with the berries. Bake for around thirty-five minutes or until a tooth pick inserted into the centre comes out dry and/or when the centre is pressed, it acts springy. Let cool for five minutes. Serve with cream and coulis.

Lovely at all temperatures, but my preference is slightly warm.

The centre is sodden with strawberry juice but the borders are fluffy cake.

À la prochaine!

OTHER IRON COOKWARE SERIES POSTS

Lemon Basil Garlic Smashed Potatoes

Roasted Salmon & Spiced Rhubarb With Fresh Pea shoots

Mashed Potato Cantal Onion Pancakes