Rich Cream of Mushroom Soup

This obviously works brilliantly with stronger flavoured mushrooms like cèpes, but most of us have a devil of a job finding fresh French forest cèpes in Spinneys. Don’t ask me why…

Carrefour occasionally has a bag of mixed forest mushrooms in its freezer section and this is an ideal base for this soup. If you’re using button mushrooms, add a couple of soaked dried cèpes or (if you’re really posh) a splash of truffle oil to the mushroom mixture to heavy up the flavour a little. If these aren’t to hand, don’t worry. This soup still tastes great.

Ingredients

• 250g mushrooms, chopped
• 200g onion, chopped
• 25g butter
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tbsp flour
• 300ml stock
• 400ml gold-top milk
• 100ml cream
• 50ml whisky
• ½ tsp grated nutmeg
• ½ tsp salt

Heat the butter and oil in a pan and then add the onion, frying over a medium heat for approx 5 mins to soften. Add the mushrooms and cook for 15-20 minutes, then add the flour, stock, salt, nutmeg and whisky and give it a good stir around. Then mix in the milk and turn off the heat. Liquidise, strain and return to the pan, adding the cream. Reheat to serve.