Yet again, I had to throw out a bowl of take-out mushroom soup. It was more Cream of Flour soup, with no mushrooms in sight. It tasted weird and chalky. I seriously considered calling the place and asking if the mushrooms were being held hostage somewhere in the neighbhourhood. I did that once and the proprietor didn’t find anything funny in my request. This wasn’t my first brush with soupy disappointment. Oh well.
Lately, the soups I’ve been purchasing have either been so runny you can see your spoon at the bottom (for a cream soup?) or super thick because too much flour was used to thicken it. The actual mushroom, when I did find one, turned out to be bland and rather rubbery.
The thing is – I just love mushrooms! They’re so delicious and versatile, and oh, so flavourful – from the sweet looking white button mushrooms to the exotic enoki, the delicate shiitake and the mouth-watering cremini. The king oyster, with its lovely woodsy flavour, really is king, and the portabellas are truly are a stand in for steak dinner.
Mushrooms are low in everything, including calories, carbs, cholesterol, sodium and fat. Yet they’re big on essential nutrients, vitamins, minerals and anti-oxidants.
And I love them in soup! Well, I love them in everything – over polenta, tossed in pasta, blended into scrambled eggs.
