NOODLES WITH PRAWNS AND SUN DRIED TOMATOES

This dish is like a book with three main characters, all equally important, interesting and with personality.

Noodles, sundried tomatoes and prawns. Each one different in flavour, texture and taste. I used whole wheat organic noodles which had a good bite to it, prawns that were full of flavour, succulent and juicy and sundried tomatoes that were quite intense, a little sour and with a sweetness of its own.

The little sidekicks were a couple of garlic cloves and some chillie paste to spice things up a little. And some sweet basil leaves to add interest and to humour me.

It turned out to be a very simple, interesting and delicious dish. And I loved it.

I first came across the use of sundried tomatoes in a noodle cookbook I had bought once upon a time long long ago. Yes ~ that long. 

And ever since then I have been meaning to try sundried tomatoes because it was an ingredient that was new to me and it sounded and looked really good. After many many years of meaning to-s I have in the end made it. 

And I'm glad I did. It's good. So very good. Like all simple things in life.

 

Here's the recipe by Kit Chan that I tweaked a little...........

6 oz dried noodles, boiled according to instructions, kept aside

7-8 large prawns, shelled  with tails left intact  and deveined

5-6 sundried tomatoes, sliced into strips

2 cloves garlic, pounded or grated to a paste

1-2 tsp chillie paste,fresh or bottled

2 tsp light soy sauce

1/2 tsp sugar

some sweet basil leaves, washed and drained

2 T cooking oil

Season the prawns with soy sauce and sugar. Keep aside

Pound two pieces of the sundried tomato to a paste using a pestle and mortar. 

Heat 1 tablespoon of oil in a pan. Saute the garlic and then add the prawns and saute until the prawns are just done and pink. Lift off the prawns and keep aside.

Add the remaining oil and saute the sundried tomato paste and the chillie paste for a minute. Add the noodles and mix well. Add a little stock or water if too dry. Sprinkle some salt and and mix well. 

Throw in the prawns and basil leaves and mix again. Serve.

FISH FLOSS ~ SERUNDING IKAN

When a warm tropical thunderstorm ceases I'm happy. I feel as fresh as a cold, squirmy fish soaking in a sharp, chilly lake in the lush, mountain jungles of Borneo. With a camera. Snapping cheerfully at my bowl of fish floss. Knees in a puddle, slipping about on wet leaves.

It's the after rain feeling I'm having now. A little bouncy, blithe, light and gurgly. Its the ions. You know ~ the negetive ions~.

And strangely enough my fish floss look almost like fish food. Fish food fit for a Fish King. Or for the Queen of Fish. 

That's how gurgly I'm feeling right now.......pheash forgive me.

Tuna is what I used. 3 whole tunas, filleted, skinned, poached and crumbled. And spiced up with some chillie, coriander seeds, onions, garlic, ginger and tumeric. 

It's an appetizer, a side dish, a sandwich filler. It can be eaten as a topping for fried rice, with steamed glutinous rice or with bread for breakfast or as a snack. I love it. It's one of my favourite appetizers. If only it requires less time to make and if it lasts longer around the house.

This is one of those childhood food that I remember fondly of but rather vaguely because it was always presented to us or bought for special occasions but never made.

The light, airy flossed meat, fish or chicken that I remember is not something one can achieve at home. It usually looks like it has been shredded into strands and then beaten to a pulp until it's looks light and fluffy. Like it was done by a machine. Or a maniac.

But if you make it at home it will almost always look a little grainy not light and floss like.


Now..... Zurin here didn't want that. So to achieve that lightness that she does so covet I pulsed the cooked fish floss in the food processor until the little balls of fish floss became fine, light and airy. 


I thought it looked much better. You're welcome.

The recipe..................


650 gm of cooked fish meat (tuna, mackeral or any meaty fish) I used 3 whole tunas about 12 inches from tip to tail. You could also use an equal amount of minced beef or chicken.

6 medium onions
4 garlic
1 inch ginger
1/2 inch galangal
2 stalks lemon grass (white part only)
3 T coriander seed, pounded coarsely
1 T or more chillie paste (bottled or fresh)

2 tsp tumeric powder 
1 T sugar

250 ml coconut milk or cream
5 T any vegetable oil

salt

Poach the fillets of fish in pan of water until cooked. Drain and let cool. Remove bones and crumble the meat until it is as fine as you can get it....like breadcrumbs. Keep aside.


Peel onions, garlic ginger, galangal. Slice the white part of the lemon grass. Place them all in a food proccesor and process until quite fine.


Heat up the oil in a thick based medium pot. Saute the processed spices, while adding the chillie paste, tumeric powder and pounded coriander seeds, until fragrant and the paste turns a darker colour. About 10 to 15 minutes.



Put in the crumbled fish meat, pour in the coconut milk or cream and mix well. Let it cook on the stove on small to medium heat, stirring now and then to prevent burning. Ad sugar and salt. Stir and mix.


The mixture should not have any sauce or gravy but should be quite like a thick wet paste. Cook until it becomes slightly drier and it is no longer too wet.


Transfer the mixture to a large baking tray that has been lined with foil or baking paper for easier cleaning.

Bake in an oven at 170 C, checking and stirring every 15 minutes until the fish floss becomes golden all over. 


Stirring the floss as it bakes is important so that the floss browns evenly. I didn't time the baking but I think it took about an hour. 


Remove and let it cool completely. Pour half the floss into a food processor and pulse until the floss becomes fine, light and airy. Do the same for the rest of the floss.


Store in an airtight container and in the refrigerator.


Top or Snack.

GINGKO NUT CHICKEN SOUP

Pour kicap (soy sauce) into the milk to turn it into soy milk to feed  it to the chicken that plays with onions and rolls in rolled oats.

Which translates to :

Kicap (soy sauce)
Milk
Soy milk
Chicken
Onion
Rolled oats

That was my grocery list memorized according to Kevin Trudeau's mega memorizng method that I learnt years ago when I thought I still had one (a memory).

It took me a good 3 minutes of hard concentration to come up with that useful utter nonsense. It's hard work.

Which translates to :

I have very little willing memory.

So when Terri of Hunger hunger had so generously given me some gingko nuts when we met on her way home from China I thought they would make lovely plugs for all those holes that my brain has been complaining about.

I have made the soup three times since. It is simply chicken broth cooked with some ginger, any kind of vegetable, some tofu and of course the memory enhancing gingko nuts. A simple, light and healthy soup with a slight bitter undertone from the gingko nuts. All in all quite lovely. And I have finished the batch of nuts that Terri had given me.

When I first began cracking the shell, ejecting the nutmeat, blanching the nutmeat in hot boiling water to ease the skinning of the thin brown skin, splitting the nuts length wise to remove the bitter young shoot within, I found it more fiddly then I had expected. But I was determined to make it.

Eventually, as the following batch of nuts sat and waited their turn over the next few days, ejecting and peeling them became much easier. Terri had also told me that it was not necessary to rid it of the bitter shoot within. But being rather bitter intolerant I thought it would be better if I did.

The gingko nuts were very tender when cooked. They were rather creamy and soft and rather bland with a slight bitter edge to it.

The soup was very easy to make. I have adapted it from a recipe for a lovely clear chicken soup with leeks from a Vogue Travel and Entertainment magazine.

Please note that the gingko nut is toxic if eaten raw. It must be cooked.

The recipe................ serves about 4

1 medium free range chicken (kampung chicken), whole
3 slices ginger
leeks, white part trimmed to 1 cm lengths and green part just cut roughly, washed and rinsed well

1 large onion, peeled
1 small carrot

1 cake tofu, cut into 1 inch cubes
10 -12 gingko nuts, shell cracked, brown skin peeled and bitter shoot removed, if preferred

Place whole chicken into a pot large enough for it. Cover with water. Put in the ginger, whole onion, and washed green part of the leeks and a carrot.


Bring to a boil and then simmer for 40 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through. Add salt. Remove scum, the green leeks, carrot and onion.

You have basically made a chicken broth.

Remove the chicken, drain well and keep it aside on a board.


Add tofu, the chopped white part of the leeks, prepared gingko nuts and bring the broth to a boil and then simmer very gently for about 10 to 15 minutes. 


Meanwhile, the chicken may be deboned and the meat removed in shreds or it may be cut up into its parts with a pair of kitchen scissors at the leg joints, wing joints and the breasts cut into 2 or 3 parts with a knife. Arrange in serving bowls and pour the soup over the chicken to serve, dividing the tofu, leeks and gingko nuts between the individual bowls.


Serve hot. Food for the brain.

PINEAPPLE AND MANGO CHUTNEY

The only time I would encounter a chutney as a young girl was when we attended a wedding. And most of the time it would be a pineapple chutney.

Another kind of preserve that we have is called acar (pronounced ah-char). It is very similar to a chutney but it has a bigger proportion of vegetables to fruits. The sauce is made using more oil. Its a little sour and very spicy. Usually it is made up of cucumbers, julienned carrots, whole preserved limes, shallots, garlic cloves, whole bird chillies and sesame seeds or crushed peanuts.



And for the past 10 years or so we have seen the addition of little pieces of dried, salted fish. It became the the avant-garde ingredient for acar and added that oh-where-have-you-been-all-my-life oomph. And an acar without salted fish just wouldn't be right nowadays.

Needless to say acar is the preferred vegetable preserve over chutney in Malaysia simply because it is spicy rather than sweet.


However, I am making a chutney now because I was looking for an accompaniment that was on the sweet side for some black and white sesame seed crisps that I made recently. The recipe for the crisps will follow in my next post.


I had made some lovely Baba Ganoush as a dip at first but it lacked that crazy South East Asian spice factor that is a pre-requisite for my idiosyncratic biological make up.


And chutney seemed perfect because it is 'jammy' in texture, the fruits soft, the sauce thick and syrupy and is a little sweet, almost like a delicious jam. But with that wicked spicy edge to it. A perfect dip for those crunchy sesame seed crisps.

Besides I also get to use those lovely jars that I had bought ages ago but have had no occasion to use quite yet. Until now that is.



The recipe.................

1 small pineapple, peeled and cubed
3 medium mangoes slightly underipe, peeled and cubed
5 whole garlic cloves, peeled
1 white onion, diced
1 inch ginger, grated finely
1 green chillie, cut into chunks
1 sweet red pepper, diced largish pieces
some raisins (optional)
2 T curry powder or less if you prefer mixed with some water into a slurry
1/2 cup pineapple vinegar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 T of mustard seeds
The zest and juice of 1 lemon (optional)

2 T cooking oil

Heat oil in a medium pan until hot but not smoking. Saute the diced onions and garlic and ginger and mustard seeds until fragrant. Pour in the curry powder slurry and stir to avoid sticking to the bottom of the pan. Saute for about 6 minutes or more until the curry spice turns a darker shade is cooked well and fragrant.

Throw in the fruits, chillies, peppers, raisins and stir to mix well. Add the cider vinegar and brown sugar and mix again.

Let the mixture simmer and allow the the sauce to reduce to a thick and syrupy consistency. Add salt, the lemon zest and juice towards the end and cook a little while more to incorporate. Taste and adjust.

Leave to cool completely before storing.

This chutney is delicious eaten with the sesame crisps that I will be showing in my next post soon as a snack or a cocktail or as an appetizer. YUM...

A PASTA SALAD WITH SARDINES IN OIL

I don't want to rant about the weather. Well............maybe I do.

The sun shines in the morning nice and bright. But by at least 12 noon its starts to get cloudy and it drizzles. And 2 hours later it pours like we are being hosed down by the fire department. Everything is grey outside and while its kind of cool in feeling it's certainly not 'cool' a time to be taking photographs.

I scurry with my plate of whatever to my garden/front yard after fumbling with the keys to the grille (we must be careful these days in the city...snatch thieves and baddies can pop up anywhere and at any time) and place my props (which sometimes trail and drop all over behind me in my hurry) and place them as nicely as I can under a slowly closing sky (it's too dark in the house) and then I start snapping in between drizzles before it threatens to pour.


I scurry back inside with me plate and props.......perspiring.....in the humidity, un-click my memory card and snap it in to my comp. I check out the photos and they are all DULL.

I haven't been posting for some time and those are the reasons up there. Dark skies, pouring rain and dull pictures.

And ....hub drags/threatens/lectures/reads out the list of benefits of going to the gym.......every morning (Yes.... I'm like that). So that leaves me with dark, dull, grey afternoons to contemplate the worth of a photography session.

But post I must .....so here's a dish of a noodle salad weaved with sardines, chunks of tomatoes, chopped green chillies, minced red onions and a dressing of mustard seeds, olive oil and lime juice. And a nice crunchy tasty topping of fried breadcrumbs. Nice and quite healthy.

This is a very easy dish to prepare. I would have used local noodles if I had some but pasta was good too. The only reason I prefer local noodles is because they are more tender and I could get the ones made without eggs.

I am sure freshly made pasta is awesome and is no comparison to the dried ones that I use, which I find a little 'tough' if I could use the word. Because I have never tasted freshly made pasta, I have, as a result, always preferred our local noodles for their texture.

Being a fish person I also love the use of sardines in oil in this dish. If I had my way I would have added some bird chilies to give it a bit more of a kick. But what topped it all was the use of the crispy fried breadcrumbs. It added that crunch. Jamie Oliver has some wonderful ideas and these breadcrumbs are one of them!



The recipe.................. for 1 or 2 persons

6 0zs of spaghetti, boiled in salted water with a dash of olive oil till till al dente and drained
1 small red onion, minced
1 green chillie or bird chillies,chopped
a handful of cherry tomatoes, halved or quartered
1 small can of sardines in oil (I used 120 gm can), drained

The dressing......

2 T olive oil
1-2 T lime juice
1-2 T mustard seeds (biji sawi), roasted in dry pan and pounded or 1 T whole grain mustard
1 or 2 cloves garlic, pounded or crushed
salt n pepper/chillie flakes

Topping............from Jamie Oliver's book (not to a T though)

A cup of breadcrumbs seasoned with salt and pepper and some herbs if you like..
4 -5 T of olive/vegetable oil

Heat up the oil in a small pan. Drop the breadcrumbs in to the pan, spread it out evenly in a layer and fry till golden brown. Once crisp and brown lift off an d drain on kitchen paper

The Salad...........

Mix all the dressing ingredients with a whisk. Taste and adjust for salt and tangy-ness.

Place boiled and cooked spaghetti in a medium bowl, pour in dressing, followed by the chopped veggies and and sardines. Mix and toss well. Adjust for salt and pepper and tangy-ness again. Top with fried breadcrumbs. Serve cold. YUM.

EGG SAMBAL

What makes this dish unique from other egg dishes is that the egg is not just simply boiled and then thrown into a sambal or a sauce or a dip. It is boiled. Hard boiled. Peeled and then deep fried whole until the surface of the whole egg is golden brown and blistered.

The Thais have a dish quite similar to this where the egg is also deep fried to a golden blister. And they call this Son-in-law eggs. And "it is interesting to speculate from the grins of the Thais that it has something to do with a mother in law who doesn't have a very high opinion of her son in law.!" (Excerpt from Thai Cooking by Jennifer Brennan).


Now, this was the very first dish that I cooked when I visited my daughter and son in law in the US a couple of years ago (without hub). In fact I cooked this dish quite regularly when I stayed with them. In fact I cooked it so regularly that I would be surprised if my son in law did have a very high opinion of me or of my cooking.


I did so because my daughter had a ready bottle of homemade ground dried chillie paste in the refrigerator. I did it because I could boil eggs blind folded. I did it because it was my chance to eat really spicy food for a month without having to cook a separate dish for hub. And I did it because eggs do not need to be chopped, minced, fiddled with or skinned. In fact it need not even be fried into a golden blister if the fancy does not strike you. It just needs to be boiled. Hard boiled that is.

Because what makes this dish really really lovely is the sambal. In fact to a South East Asian being what makes any dish really scrumptious is the sambal. Period.

You could throw anything into a sambal....deep fried chicken, prawns, deep fried fish, deep fried brinjals or eggplants, squid, thin slices of deep fried beef, deep fried tempe, deep fried crispy anchovies, deep fried anything and it's heaven sent and good to go.

All that is needed to complete the meal is a plate of white steaming and freshly cooked rice. A big white and pristine mound of it.


And the rest they say is.............burp.....oops ...scoosh me

The recipe...........................

5 eggs, boiled, cooled and skinned
2 medium red onions or 6 shallots, peeled and sliced
2 or 3 cloves garlic
6 fresh red chiilies, seeded if you prefer it mild, which defeats the whole purpose of a sambal by the way.
2 teaspoons of ready ground chillie paste in a bottle
1/2 inch piece of belacan or shrimp paste
1 teaspoon of tamarind paste mixed with 1/2 cup water and juice squeezed out

cooking oil

Dry the boiled and peeled eggs thoroughly. Heat up a wok and pour enough oil into it to deep fry the eggs. When the oil is hot drop the eggs in gently one at a time and deep fry them until the surface is blistered and golden brown. Remove with a slotted spoon and keep aside on a kitchen towel to drain of excess oil.

Pound the sliced onions or shallots, garlic together with the fresh large red chillies in a pestle and mortar until it becomes a coarse paste. Add the belacan and pound a little more. Keep aside.

Strain the tamarind juice and keep aside.

Take away some of the oil from the wok that was used for deep frying the eggs leaving about 4 tablespoons.

Heat up the oil again a little and then saute the pounded chillie and onion mixture. Add in the chillie paste almost immediately and saute until fragrant and the sambal turns a darker red and the oil rises to the top. Probably about 6 or 7 minutes. Pour in the tamamrind juice, add salt to taste and a pinch or two of sugar. Let it come ot a boil and then a slow simmer until the sauce is reduced to a wet, thick paste.

At this point you can throw in the eggs, whole, and mix to combine and cover the eggs completely with sambal of if you prefer slice the eggs in half and place on top of the sambal in a serving dish. Personally I would have preferred it the first way but because I wanted it to look a little pretty to be photographed I halved the eggs.

Enjoy.

FISH BALLS

Fish balls have always intrigued me. I have always been skeptical of recipes which tell you to dump fish meat into a food processor and then to shape the processed paste into balls. And you're supposed to get fish balls.

Simply because I've heard stories and seen recipes where fish meat is chopped up on a board with a mean looking cleaver until it becomes mush, then pounded in a pestle and mortar and then given a good beating by a pair of biceps. All the rigmarole one has to go through for bouncy, springy fish balls that deliver you a good bite.

Then I think of commercially made fish balls and I wonder at all those biceps hard at work in the din of the factory? The sweat of highly able-armed persons mixed with grunts, thin, white cotton T-shirts clinging to bodies and sucking up the sweat? And then those wet and glistening arms dripping with sweat? The whole place dimly lit in a far flung humid and tropical corner of nowhere? Add mosquito infested for some drama. And a murderer skulking by? Gosh. It must be quite a sight. If indeed that is how they make fish balls for commerce.

But I chose to brush those stories off as half truths since I was living in the 21st century. So I made fish balls. In my kitchen. In my food processor. Without biceps. No sweat.


I managed to make fish balls. Clean, full-flavoured and with enough bite to make me kind of happy. I squeezed one between my thumb and forefinger as I've seen some people do as a test for bounciness. It was there. Kind of. I bounced one into a bowl and it jumped right out. Need I say more?

It was bouncy enough for me. And had enough of a bite as far as I was concerned. And all without the lye water.That dreaded toxic substance used in commercial fish balls to add that ever sought after bounce and bite.

Terri from hunger hunger, my invaluable repository for Chinese cooking, guided me along. Bounciness, she says, is all in the fish, the whole fish and nothing but the fish. No lye water needed if you use the right kind of fish. And she named a few, well 3 to be precise.

1. The spotted mackeral
2. 'Tofu' fish with the yellow tail and
3. Yellow tail barracuda

The 'tofu' fish Terri says makes the smoothest and sweetest fish balls. Terri says she can never make fish balls as good as her maid, Vera, does. She wished me luck. I needed it.

So I went fishing and I got 3 'tofu' fish with yellow tails at the night market, all for 11 ringgit. Cheap! Cheap?

I had the surprised fish monger fillet them for me and all I did when I went home was to slice the fillet down the middle and sliced off the tiny spikes of bones that are embedded and that run down the middle. Then I scraped the flesh off the skin with a metal spoon. Easy. I made sure I cleaned the scales off thoroughly first of course.

A mackeral would have been a lot easier to deal with, I would imagine, but it would have cost me much more.

So that's the story of how I made fish balls. And from now on I hope to live happily ever after in my fish bowl...uhm....fish ball world.


The recipe......................uh oh... my son swallowed up half the fish balls before I could count them. But I think I got between 30 and 35 fish balls. It all depends on how small or big you make them of course.

The recipe.......................


300 gm fish meat of one of the 3 fish mentioned above
2 T ice cold water
1tsp salt
1/2 tsp sugar
1 tsp oil
1 tsp cornflour

Place fish meat in a food processor and start to whizz.When the meat becomes a paste add in 1 tablespoon of cold water, reserving the other tablespoon in a bowl. Continue to process until the meat is a fine and smooth paste. Remove from the machine and place the fish paste in a medium bowl.

In the bowl with water add in the rest of the ingredients and stir to combine. Pour this mixture into the fish paste and using a fork stir vigorously until the two combine and come together into a firm and shiny mass.

Place in the freezer for about 10 or 15 minutes.

Using 2 teaspoons pick up a blob of the paste and shape by moving the blob from one teaspoon to the other until it is compact and smooth. (you could grab a whole mass of the paste in the palm of your hand, make a fist, squeeze and release a blob through your thumb and forefinger and scoop off the blob with a spoon).

Place the shaped fish balls in a bowl of water and ice or just on a medium stainless steel tray in one layer. Carry on until the paste is finished. If you used iced water you can skip the 'place in the freezer for 15 minutes'. Place in the freezer for 15 minutes.

Bring a medium pot of water to a boil. Take out the raw fish balls and drop them in one at a time until the bottom of the pot is covered with a layer of fish balls. Do not let water to boil vigorously....only a gentle simmer until the balls float to the surface by which time you can scoop them of with a spider web. Do the same for the rest of the raw fish balls.

Done. Let cool. Use for a noodle soup like here or in stir fried noodles, rice etc.

PRAWN AND FISHBALL RICE VERMICELLI SOUP

Nothing like a good wholesome chicken stock to make a good soup with. So with 3 chicken carcasses that I roasted in the oven until they browned, 1 large onion, 1 head of garlic, a carrot and 2 celery stalks cut into chunks, some water and a large pot I came up with about 5 cups of lovely golden clear broth that was full of flavour.

Then I made this simple noodle soup the next day.


I might also mention that I made the fish balls too but since I avoided using lye water as one of the ingredients, because lye water is toxic, my fish balls, although full of flavour, were lacking in the bounce department. But it didn't matter to me as long as everything was homemade and safe. And good.


Making up the soup the next day was a breeze because there cannot be anything easier than making a clear noodle soup. It is simple, pure and refreshing yet so full of flavour.


The recipe...............for 2 or 3 persons.

Enough rice vermicelli for 2 or 3 people, soaked in just boiled water until softened and drained in a colander. Keep aside.

2 garlic cloves
2 spring onions, white part sliced
3 cups of good chicken stock, preferably homemade
6 or 7 large prawns
10 or 12 fishballs
some bak choy, washed and seperated
2 T cooking oil
a dash of soy sauce
salt and pepper

Heat up the oil in a medium pot. Saute the garlic and spring onions until fragrant and soft. Add the prawns and fish balls and stir to cook through. It will probably take about 2 to 3 minutes. Add in hot stock and bring the soup to a boil and then simmer . Add the bak choy and simmer only until the bak choy is a lovely bright green. Taste for seasoning and adjust if neccesary. Done.

Serve : Put a serving of the rice noodles in individual bowls and por the hot soup over it to cover the noodles. Top with prawns and fish balls and a few stalks of bak choy in each bowl.

CREAMY MUSHROOM SOUP

I can't quite decide whether I am a cheerful pessimist or a melancholy optimist.

That is how I feel when I make mushroom soup. When satisfaction does not come immediately to my eyes and must be sought by pondering, when the good of the food does not strike me as I'm cooking it or when I'm done cooking it, I think I am a melancholy optimist.


But when I taste a spoonful and it wows me, and I know I have to make it appeal to our sense of sight as well, so that judgment will be reserved, so that our immediate instinct would be to scoop a little to our lips inspite of it being such a drab and dull looking soup. Then, I think, I am a cheerful pessimist.


So perhaps I am both. Both a pessimist and an optimist when I make mushroom soup. Let's face it...it looks so dull and quite unappetizing. But tastes so good. So I'll make it and then I'll plate it in the most opposite manner. Simply because they need each other. Balance after all is key. Wouldn't you agree? ;)


The recipe.............................for 4 - 6 persons.

I did not measure the liquid amounts exactly but a creamy mushroom soup is so easy that if you find it too thin add a little more flour or if you find it too thick add a little more stock. But it should be nice and creamy.


I used a mixture of olive oil and butter because the little door to my conscience inside of my head was opening and closing, opening and closing and it finally opened up completely and I felt this rush of guilt about using too much butter with the heavy cream. Sigh.


1/4 cup olive oil
2 T butter

3 cups slice shitake mushrooms or a mixture of shitake and portabello/buttons
2 shallots ,chopped
4 T plain flour
3 cups chicken broth or stock or a stock cube dissolved in water ( I used stock that I made myself)
1 1/4 cups double cream
salt and pepper
some chopped chives (western chives)

Warm the olive oil and melt the butter in a pan. When just hot enough add the shallots and mushrooms and saute until soft.

Add in the flour and stir in. It will become a thickish mixture. Add in the 3 cups of stock or broth.Stir well. Bring to a boil and then reduce the heat. Add the cream and stir on low heat. Do not allow to boil. Add salt and pepper and some chopped chives for flavour.

The mixture will be slightly on the thin side.

Take out half the mixture with a ladle and pour into a blender and swish until the mushrooms are one with the liquid. Pour teh blended soup back into the pot and stir to recombine. You should have a nice creamier soup.

Garnish. Plate optimistically. Serve.