Cold Curing Mushroom Soup–French Fridays with Dorie

The French Friday recipe for this week fit in perfectly with my need for healing food–my family’s new year began with a hideous cold that has settled deep into our bones.  Dorie’s Paris Mushroom Soup provides a host of anti-viral, healing ingredients: garlic, mushrooms and onions form the base.   It also provided me with an opportunity to try out an ingredient that is fairly new to my repertoire–black garlic.

I know, it looks like tar, or worse–but don’t judge, it actually has delicious, almost umami-like flavor. On the plus side, no need to chop, its soft texture melts right into the initial saute step. Getting you to the mushrooms even quicker.

For the broth, I used an organic mushroom broth.
While the soup simmered, I prepared the “salad” in the soup bowls.

At this point I should mention that if you don’t have a good immersion blender (tips on the problems and questions section of FFwD website indicate those with a Braun had a much more success than those of us with lesser products), use a blender, but be sure to not to fill it more than 1/3 full or you will be cleaning your work area from floor to ceiling (need I say more?).

The result was a delicious, substantial but not heavy, soup. I didn’t have crème fraiche so I added a bit of parsley on top for color. My note for next time: a mixture of mushrooms for a deeper flavor. I’m thinking Shitake for their medicinal value (especially if I don’t shake this cold before my next batch of this soup) as well as flavor.  Baby bellas would be good, too.

If you’d like to try this easy soup yourself, grab a copy of Dorie’s around my french table. If you want to see how everyone else fared with this recipe, and likely find some great variations, check out French Fridays with Dorie.