MIKEY BELL

Seldom will I actually look for an soup recipe because I use the same method every single time. 

Said method, you ask? Roast every damn thing. 

There is a lot to be said for simmering ingredients on a hob, as you would traditionally have a soup, but with this, I prefers the oven. The moments I crave the gentle, repetitive hand-to-mouth comfort a soup are usually the moments when I want to do the least amount of admin. So slipping a tray of ingredients in a hot oven and blitzing them with a hand blender is just about as much work as I can muster. 

I was raised on mushroom soup (cement soup, I used to call it, for colour reasons alone, not for it’s texture and flavour, pinky promise) and this recipe is fairly close in profile to the one my Mam would make. It’s a creamy bowl of stone coloured soup with whooping rips of fresh bread just sings the song of a mother’s love, but also the song of a woman who probably hadf a shit tonne of mushrooms about to crawl to the bin and needed to get them cooked.

However, I have made some lazy shortcuts with the roasting, but you will thank me for it when you get home from work and can’t even face stirring a pot. 

Actually, you know what, as it goes, it’s actually not done for laziness sake, although that is a great benefit, but for flavour’s sake. Roasting the mushrooms brings out this toasty nuttiness that just frying them and then simmering them in liquid just won’t achieve.

It’s just a bonus that this means the amount of hands-off admin involved in this recipe is kept to a minimum, and the whole meal could come together in less than 50 minutes for sure, inclusive of chopping.

It is not inclusive of washing up. You’re on your own there.

Some thoughts.

Mushrooms – you’d expect mushrooms in a mushroom soup, right? But which ones. Well that’s up to you. I like a mix of chestnut and button. Chestnut has that reliable, well-rounded earthiness, but the buttons are more delicate, providing balance, but also keep the colour in the slight more appealing end of cement. Mixed wild mushrooms would be fabulous, and the complexity of an umami mix of wild mushrooms (shiitake, oyster etc) would also be grand.

Spicing – nutmeg is my choice here, for the creamy warmth and other than black pepper to lift the savouriness, I don’t recommend anything else. Keep paprika, cumin, and chilli out of this. They will only combat the flavour, not compliment them.

Herbs – I specify thyme because that gloomy, damp pixie-dreamland-woodsiness just feels appropriate against the mushrooms, but if you had to leave it out, you’ll be okay. I wouldn’t offer an alternative here. Rosemary is a bully and parsley would be a whimp. I gueeeeess fresh oregano if you were feeling bold, but I’d personally just leave it out if you don’t have thyme.

Stock – beef, which I know sullies the vegetarian appeal here, but it adds a richness and depth. However, I have made this with vegetable soup and it’s lightness was also perfect. I just recommend using a homemade or good quality one to compensate for the lost richness.

Cheese – I mean… baked feta is baked feta… I’m not confident another cheese will do what feta needs to do here? If you don’t want the baked feta aspect of this recipe, you could just plonk an old rind of parmesan in the soup once it’s blended, so that the salty, sweetness of the remaining parmesan can seep into the soup.

Cream – none. Mad, right? Not that I have anything against cream personally, I just trust the lux creaminess of this soup to fit the bill by itself, without the added dairy.

Oh, and one final note.

Ignore those that tell you soup is not a complete meal. 

They clearly have not had a good bowl of mushroom soup and an inappropriate, wobbling stack of crusty bread and real butter by its side. 

Serves 2 – 4 

Approx 700g mushrooms (I like a 50/50 mix of chestnut and button)

1 onion – peeled, roughly chopped

2 garlic cloves

40g unsalted butter

2 tbs olive oil

A pinch of nutmeg

A small bunch of fresh thyme 

1 litre of beef (or vegetable) stock 

200g block of feta 

Chunks of bread – to serve

1. Preheat the oven to 180 °C. 
2. Into a large roasting tray, tip your mushrooms and fling in the onion and the garlic cloves (don’t chop them) and scatter over some salt and pepper. 
3. Add the butter and 1 tbs of the olive oil to the pan with a modest grating of nutmeg and a generous dusting of fresh thyme leaves plucked from their strands. 
4. Toss everything together and slip the roasting tray in the oven for about 30- 35 minutes until the mushrooms are lightly golden and toasted. They’ll shrink, which is normal, don’t panic. Also, don’t turn off the oven if you’re baking the feta.
5. Carefully spoon everything into a medium saucepan, adding a small amount of the vegetable stock and then blitzing, adding vegetable stock as you go until you get the right consistency for you. If it’s too thick, you can always add more, but if you throw it all in at once and it’s too loose for your taste, you can’t reverse it. So add the stock, splash by splash, in between blitzes until you’re happy. Put the saucepan on a low heat while you bake the feta.
6. Place a sheet of baking paper on roasting tray and crumble the feta on to it. Doesn’t have to be a new tray, it can just be the emptied, wiped, and lined tray of mushrooms.
7. Drizzle with the remaining oil, sprinkle with some pepper and slip in the oven, still hot from the mushrooms, and bake for about 15 – 20 minutes until the tips start to catch and char a little. 
8. Serve the soup with a further scattering of fresh thyme and some of the baked feta on top. Bread not optional.