Recipe: Mushroom soup & garlic bread

Shen, here you go... Our mushroom soup recipe... Foolproof, easy and always a hit with everyone at our family dinners/parties.

Ingredients:

400g mushrooms
60g butter
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1/4 cup plain flour
4 cups chicken stock
1 cup cream
Salt & pepper to taste

Instructions:

Chop up the mushrooms into equal sizes. (You can mix a variety of mushrooms like portobello, shitake, button, oyster. Different combinations give slightly different tastes so it's fun experimenting.)

Heat the butter in a large pan, add the garlic and mushrooms and cook until the mushrooms are soft (about 5 mins).

Add the flour and stir for a minute. Stir in stock and simmer, covered for 10 mins.

Turn off the heat and blend the soup until smooth with a metal handheld blender. (Or let the soup cool a little and blend it in batches in a normal blender.) I usually prefer my soup slightly chunky so I try not to overblend.

Turn the heat back on and add the cream, stir over low heat until the soup is heated through. Add pepper and salt and serve.

* If you are making this ahead of time, don't reheat and add the cream, salt and pepper in first. You can leave the pot alone and do the reheating and adding of cream just before serving.

I also like to add a dash of truffle oil at the end sometimes.

Goes well with our family garlic bread. I'll need to try to make proper measurements for the garlic spread cos I always just throw everything in a bowl and hope for the best. But here's the gist of it:

Garlic spread recipe:

I use Neosoft margarine for this as it's really smooth and easily spreadable. I put the whole tub of it in a bowl and add finely diced garlic, thinly shredded cheese, chopped herbs and black pepper.

We discovered that by frying the garlic beforehand until crisp does wonders. Although remember to let the fried garlic cool before adding it in to the margarine.

You pretty much can use any cheese, all up to your preference really. However, I once used Emmental and my dad didn't like it. You can also use more or less cheese, as you wish. More cheese = cheesy garlic bread!

Any herb can be used or you can just omit this. If I happen to have herbs in the house, then I use them. Chives to parsley to whatever tickles your fancy... All in the name of experimenting!

Spread the mix generously on thinly sliced baguettes and bake in the oven (heated at 180'C) for about 5-8 mins until golden brown. Best served immediately.