Hello my fellow Gourmands,

as we rapidly approach autumn, I'm more in the mood of preparing dishes, fitting for the change of season.

For that reason, @qurator decided on a mushroom-themed contest in this weeks Qurator's: Hive Top Chef! Challenge

I don't grow mushrooms of any kind ^^, but I love them. I have a friend who collects mushrooms in the forests around our city and sometimes he shares them with me.

The mushrooms in today's dish are unfortunately storebought, as he was tightfisted this year. He only "shared" photos of his foray.

Good thing, I always have mushrooms in the fridge. When I got the idea of a Mushroom Cream Soup, I just had to go in the kitchen and start.

I prepared the soup for two servings. If you want more, adjust the ingredients accordingly.

You need

• 250g of mushrooms
• 20g butter (or margarine)
• 1 small onion
• half a stalk of celery
• 375ml broth (you can choose between vegetable, chicken or beef broth)
• 125ml milk
• 100g whipped cream
• 1 1/2 tablespoon of flour
• pinch of salt, pepper, nutmeg
• Parsley for garnishing (to your own taste)

As I wrote in the ingredient section, you can use butter or margarine. Butter makes everything creamier, that is right, but in my opinion, there is little difference between the two of them and butter is a hell of a lot more expensive. I always use margarine.

So, warm the butter/margarine in a pot over low heat.

Whilst the butter is slowly melting, you can chop up the onion and celery into small pieces, throw them in the pot and roast them until they take on bright yellow.

After you put the onion and celery into the pot, you clean the mushrooms with a brush (no water whatsoever, even if they are fresh from the ground and have dirt on them. You always brush the mushrooms and peel dirty spots with a sharp knife) and cut them into slices.
I had to peel the skin off my mushrooms, because I left them too long in the fridge. therefore, I couldn't use the stalk either, although some say, this is the best part of a mushroom.

When you are done with chopping up the mushrooms, you put them in the pot and stir everything for a minute as it roasts.

Now you take half a tablespoon of flour, (Attention: Just half a tablespoon. The other tablespoon is for later use)
dredge it over the mushrooms and give it a good stir.

Now we can deglaze everything with broth (I used chicken broth) and milk.

Let it simmer for about 10 minutes with the lid on the pot, but don't let it overboil. Even on low heat, this can happen very fast.

Some like it chunky, some like it blended. You have to serve it to your own taste.
I like it pureed, so I took my hand blender and got in there for about thirty seconds. A few tiny chunks here and there are ok, but I like it creamy. Not for nothing, the recipe is called "Mushroom Cream Soup".
You can now also season to your own taste. Season it with a pinch of salt, pepper and nutmeg.

Take a bowl and whisk the whipped cream with a tablespoon of flour. With this mixture you thicken the soup. Let the soup simmer for further 5 minutes.

If the soup is still not creamy enough for you, you can scramble additional flour with cold water to thicken the soup further.

The soup should be creamy enough. You can either add freeze-dried parsley or garnish fresh parsley together with croutons.

I didn't have croutons, so I toasted a slice of bread two times and served it with the soup.

The crunchiness of the croutons was a great contrast to the creamy mushroom soup. It complimented each other perfectly.

I could've used a bit more whipped cream at the end to give it a brighter appearance, but all in all, I was very pleased with myself.

I only wished, I had made more.

Have a nice week, everyone.