Sick Sister Food

I'm really surprised I didn't make one of these things earlier actually, VGirl seems to get sick a fair lot. She has very poor circulation and dresses fashionably even in winter, which probably does her in a fair bit. I don't cook for her very often, she doesn't like trying new things and is very, very picky about what she wants to eat. That and I as Mama Pham tells us, "your sister is a vegetarian, its not like she has any strength anyway. All she eats is vegetables."

 So one day, she comes over complaining about how sick she's been since she's been exposed to all the sick people coming into her pharmacy, that she has exams coming up, that's she's too tired to cook and that dad isn't cooking for her anymore because she doesn't eat the food he makes her. Its probably better because his cooking would've finished her off. So I told her I was going to make her something and that she should come over the next day to have some.

I had big plans to cook a hearty, thick soup for my little sister while she was sick. It was going to have all the mushrooms I could afford and easily find to put in it and as many roasted garlic bulbs as I could stand parting with to put in the soup. I woke up early, went to the Sunday markets in both Mount Gravatt and Woodridge before making a quick stop at the local Woolworths. I bought home half a kilo of button mushrooms, a pack of enoki mushrooms, some thyme, thickened cream, vegetable stock and some large organic purple Australian garlic.

I wanted to buy leeks but was badgered by my mum into not buying any because we had some at home, there wasn't any of course. I had some dried shimeji and dried black cloud ear fungus soaking in a bowl. I had sliced everything up and I sent VGirl a message saying to call me when she was done with work and I would start cooking so the soup would still be warm when she got to my house.

Of course, she forgot. Mama Pham called her, asking if we were eating yet and VGirl had no idea what she was talking about. So Mama Pham began hassling VGirl about going over because of how much effort I had gone to, so VGirl called me and I began making soup. I also hastily made her some croutons as well.

Anyway, I choose all these different mushrooms to add lots of texture and different layers of flavour to the soup. White button mushrooms for their basic mild mushroom flavour and as my main filler, enoki for their crunchiness and pasta like appearance in the soup, shiitake for a chewy texture in the soup, their large amount of umami flavouring as well as their distinctive aroma and black cloud ear fungus because its also crunchy but can also be slippery in texture if cooked long enough.

Experiment! I think this soup would be suitable with any edible mushroom you prefer, if I had wanted portobello, cremini, oyster, morel or any other ones I can't think of, I'd have gladly used them. You can easily change the ways the mushrooms are cut as well, don't use the same cut, vary it a bit and see the change in texture and intensity of flavour.

Many Mushroom Soup
500g+ of white button mushrooms, finely sliced
1 pack/100g of enoki mushrooms
3 large bulbs of roasted garlic
100g rehydrated shiitake mushrooms, or 8 dried ones roughly
100g rehydrated black cloud ear fungus, 3 large dried pieces
1 large brown onion, diced or sliced
1L of vegetable stock
100ml of thickened cream
Thyme, I don't know how much I used
Salt/Pepper

So many brown/beigey things

Thyme Croutons
3 slices of day old bread
2-3 tablespoons of butter
1/2-1 tablespoon of thyme

Instructions for the soup:
1. Cut off 1cm off the tops of your garlic bulbs. Sprinkle with olive oil and salt before wrapping the heads tightly in aluminium foil. Place them on a tray and bake for half an hour at 180C before allowing them to cool and squishing out all the roasted garlic from the cloves. Squash them again with a fork so that you don't get cloves of garlic floating in your soup.
2. While you are roasting the garlic, rehydrate your dried items with a bit of hot water. Poke them underwater with a spoon every now and again. Remove the stalks off the shiitake mushrooms, they're gross and tough.
3. Chop up everything. The smaller cut the button mushrooms, the better. Slice or dice your onions up. For the cloud ear fungus, give it a rinse and a squeeze before cutting them into thumb sized chunks. For the shiitake, squeeze all the waters out of them and cut into slices. Slice off the base of the enoki mushrooms, probably about 2-3cms off so that the dirt it grew on comes over, rinse it and separate into smaller strands.
4. Heat up some oil in a large stock pot on a steady medium until hot. Saute your onions until fragrant.

I have so many pictures of onions frying.

5. Throw in all your mushrooms barring the enoki mushrooms. Throw in the thyme with it, I used my scissors to chop it into manageable bits. Saute until your brown mushrooms have wilted, wept juice and become dry again.

There wasn't really anything fancy with this at all.

6. Throw in the garlic and then all of your stock. Once the stock is heated, throw in your enoki mushrooms and pour in the cream.

Simple soup right?

7. Season at this stage and once the enoki have softened slightly, serve with thyme croutons!

Instructions for thyme:
1. Cut your bread into a manageable bite sized pieces.

Okay, I could've made them a bit smaller.

2. Heat up a frying pan and melt in a far chunk of butter into it, what some would deem an unhealthy amount.

Ignore the blurriness, I was quickly taking photos.

3. Fry your thyme in the butter for a few seconds. Throw in the bread. Toss to coat in butter.
4. Continue to fry, frequently turning to ensure an even golden brown texture. Some will toast faster than others, that's okay, throw them into a bowl.

Oh so toasty.

5. Serve on soup, eat all remaining buttery croutons with relish if there is no soup.

VGirl ate most of the croutons out of the pan before she had the soup.