Forest mushroom soup

I have been neglecting the food blog lately. I know it's a bad excuse, but it just feels like the days flow away and it's always bedtime long before I would be ready for bed. And lately, with a load of cute new stamps just having arrived at my door, I have definitely been spending more time in the craft room than in the kitchen. This is a recipe I made a little while ago, but didn't get around to posting immediately.

This soup will only work if you have dried mushrooms which have been lovingly hand picked from the Finnish forest and then slowly dried in Finnish sauna. And the picking and drying has to be done by Mum, because that gives the soup just that extra little additional ingredient of love. So don't even try this unless you have those Mum picked mushrooms. Just kidding, just kidding. You can substitute with other mushrooms according to taste and preference.

My mum has given me plenty of dried mushrooms, and I haven't been very good at using them. I recently had a cold, and skipped eating dinner for two nights in a row just because I was too tired to even think of chewing anything. On the third day, my solution was to make this lovely soup.

Mushroom soup (serves 4 as a starter):
2 tbsp olive oil
2 onions
1 stalk of celery
300 g fresh mushrooms (I used closed cup mushrooms)
1 litre (4 cups) veggie stock
1/3 cup dried and crushed funnel chanterelle
a handful of dried, whole chanterelles
1 cup single cream
black pepper to taste

The howto:
Chop the onions and celery. Peel and slice the fresh mushrooms. In a large saucepan, sauté the onions and celery in the olive oil for a few minutes. Add the fresh mushrooms and sauté for another few minutes. Add the veggie stock and dried mushrooms. Cover with a lid and cook for about 40 minutes. Add the cream, season with pepper to taste and quickly let come to a boil. Serve with fresh bread.

The verdict:
The soup is really warming and comforting. There is just something special about making a soup from mushrooms that have been picked from a forest instead of bought from a supermarket. I think chanterelles are the tastiest mushrooms out there. I haven't seen them very much in the UK, so you better stock up on them if you ever happen to visit Finland. This is perfect comfort food.