Overdue recipe 2: Cream of Mushroom Soup (creamless & flourless)

I am a big fan of creamy mushroom soup, and I count the Mushroom Stroganoff at Soup Spoon as one of my favourites for its chunky mushroom pieces.  However, I decided to make my own version on one of my thesis-churning days after I recently happened to know that the soup contained flour.  Frequently, flour, which I suppose in this case is all-purpose (AP) flour, is used surreptitiously to thicken soups.  And I don't like the idea that I am eating empty carbs in the form of nutrition-less white flour.  I am not trying to count calories here...Soup Spoon states that its mushroom soup has a caloric value of 275, and how much of it is derived from flour?  In addition, because AP flour is derived from wheat, gluten-intolerant or sensitive people would not be able to digest the soup very well.

What is the alternative to making a creamy mushroom soup without using flour?

Cream of Mushroom Soup (creamless & flourless)

(Adapted from Mushroom Bisque, The Earthbound Cook by Myra Goodman, p. 22)

Note: In this recipe, I am just going to give general instructions without exact amount of ingredients used.  This is because I cooked the soup a long time back during thesis-churning days, haha.

Ingredients

• Cooking fat (I used butter)
• Garlic cloves (minced)
• Red onion (diced)
• 4-5 varieties of diced mushrooms, including crimini, shiitake, enoki types (I must tell you, I went the easy way of buying this huge value packet of mushrooms for steamboat purposes from NTUC supermarket, haha!)
• Vegetable broth*
• Arrowroot starch
• Italian seasoning (optional)
• Dried thyme (to garnish)
• Ground black pepper (to taste)
• Sea salt/nama shoyu (to taste)

Directions

1. Melt butter in a large saucepan over medium heat.
2. Add garlic and onion to stir-fry for about 3-5 minutes.
3. Add mushrooms (and Italian seasoning) and saute them until they start to soften and ooze out water, which takes about 5-7 minutes.
4. Add vegetable broth and let the mushrooms simmer away for about 10 minutes.  At this point, you may choose to reduce heat to avoid uncontrolled drying of the liquid.
5. Remove heat and let mushrooms sit to cool for about 5 minutes.
6. Transfer them to a high-speed blender.
7. Add arrowroot starch.  (You don't really have to add much of the starch, say about 2-3 tbsp at most, to thicken the soup because when you blend the mushrooms, the soup is naturally thickened.)
8. Blend the mushrooms and arrowroot starch mixture till it takes on a coarse pureed consistency.  Unless you want a baby-feed like consistency, please go ahead and blend away.
9. Transfer the soup to a bowl, add ground black pepper and salt to taste, and garnish with dried thyme before ready to serve.

Additional notes

• I am still a novice when it comes to playing with temperate herbs like thyme, rosemary, basil and stuff like that.  I used Italian seasoning for the sake of experiment and I think the variety of herbs in the seasoning added some complexity to the mushroom taste.  In the original recipe, the author used dried thyme to saute with the mushrooms.
• I think packaged vegetable broth is not common in mainstream supermarkets.  I bought mine from Cold Storage for about 7 SGD at about 950 ml.  Quite expensive.  You can choose to use vegetable stocks, but I discourage it because I don't like the food additives, especially MSG, inside such stocks.  For economical purposes, you can make your own vegetable broth or bone broth and store it in the refrigerator for future use.  
• Vegetable broth - Dump any kind of vegetables you like into a large pot and boil them for about 3-5 hours to extract the vegetable essence.  Some ideas are carrots, sweet potatoes, leeks, onions, celeries, cabbage etc.
• Bone broth - If you are a big fan of traditional Chinese meat broths, this should not be too surprising for you.  Just grab generous amounts of soup bones and boil them to extract the marrow. 

Sauteed Mushroom Pasta Salad

Let me begin by saying that butter from grassfed cows was used to saute the mushrooms.  So okay, this is a vegetarian but not a vegan dish.  For me, at least, I consider butter from grassfed cows, besides EVCO, to be superior to those supposedly healthier cooking vegetable oils like soybean, cannola, sunflower seed oil.  Before you proceed to read the recipe, please indulge in my rambling for a while. 

At least in my own social circle, food has yet to acquire a political and ethical dimension.  Food is just, you know, food.  You eat when you are hungry.  You eat for pleasure.  You eat to socialise with other people.  For many people, food is food.  And many Singaporeans, including myself, love food for what it is.

Lately, however, I have been reading much on food politics and reflecting on what food means to me.  Now, I am no strict vegan simply because I have only started to venture into veganism very recently, and am the only one amongst my family members and friends to do so.  Or so I thought, until I realised a few days back that I probably wasn't even one to begin with.  Because I eat raw honey.  And honey is a product from bees.  Well, bees are insects, not animals.  Why would eating honey harm any animal?  Because veganism is a living philosophy of not doing harm to sentient beings, even insects.  It is more than a diet, even a lifestyle.  It is a spirit of compassionate living.  Very commendable, but veganism definitely does not appeal to everyone.  How about vegetarianism?  Vegetarianism is a more flexible approach, in the sense that individuals can choose to include or exclude dairy products and eggs from their diets, while abstaining from meat.  And then there are flexitarians, who are semi-vegetarians only eating meat very occasionally.  So I am most likely a flexitarian after all.  But does the term matter, really?

My aspiration to become a 'semi-raw vegan' was originally rooted in my desire to change my health for the better.  However, it soon became clear to me that adopting a plant-based diet would have much more profound consequences than simply changing my own health.  When I started to cook food from scratch using the most natural and purest ingredients, I began to see the massive and complex food chain unfolding in my mind.  You know what?  The problem was not about domesticating and killing animals for food.  It was not about burning down forests to make more land for agriculture.  The epidemic problem is the ignorance of how food reach our tables.  And how often do we eat at our tables?  The Buddha calls it 'mindfulness'.  Studies have shown that mindful eating facilitates weight loss by allowing one to feel satisfied with food and eat less.  But I think mindful eating is also an act of compassion that allows you to appreciate what has gone into making the food you are eating.  For one to live, one must die.  That is the life cycle, repeated over and over again in the food chain.  I am not a Christian, so I don't thank God for my food.  But I think it is good practice for us, vegetarians and non-vegetarians alike, to show gratitude for all the living things (including plants) gone into our food that nourishes our bodies and minds.

If you have reached this point, thank you very much for your patience with me!  So here we go.

Adapted from Sauteed Mushrooms recipe by Mark Bittman in "How to Cook Everything Vegetarian", p314-315

(Serves 1 petite girl like me so please adjust amounts of ingredients used accordingly.)

Ingredients

• Thin slice of grassfed butter (*If you opt to use butter for cooking, do use butters from grassfed cows as they have a better nutritional profile than cows kept in confined spaces and fed with chemical-loaded grains.)
• Two handfuls of mixed mushrooms (*I used portobello, king oyster and Swiss brown mushrooms.  As much as possible, you should use mixed mushrooms to create a more complex mushroom-y flavour.)
• 1 tsp shoyu 
• A pinch of ground black pepper
• 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 2 tbsp balsamic vinegar

Directions

1. Heat butter in the wok.  When hot, add mushrooms and ground black pepper and allow them to cook until tender.  Some water will start to ooze out, so don't worry about your mushrooms drying out.
2. Add garlic to cook for 1 minute. 
3. Add balsamic vinegar and shoyu for flavour.  Continue to cook for another 1 minute for the flavour to sink in.  Serve hot.

I didn't want my mushrooms to be too wet, so I didn't use water at all.  You may choose to add some water if you want to have a bit of gravy in the dish.  Adjust the seasoning accordingly to your taste.

I served my mushrooms with buckwheat pasta and mixed greens, and ate everything as a salad.  I liked the earthly taste of my mushrooms.  But on hindsight, I think it would have been better to have some gravy to act as dressing over my pasta.  Gee.

Goji mushroom millet salad

I love to eat raw salads, but my body is ill-suited to eating them at every meal, every day.  There are times when I crave for something warm and hearty but don't want to miss out raw greens.  This afternoon was one such instance, and I prepared myself a warm salad, comprising cooked millet served with raw baby spinach leaves.  To infuse an earthly flavour to the millet, I stewed it in mushroom broth and then sprinkled a handful of Goji berries for a dash of delicate sweetness.  The result?  A simple but nourishing lunch on a cold, windy afternoon.

Ingredients

• Raw baby spinach greens
• 3 tbsp hulled millet (sufficient to fill up a petite girl like me)
• 1 garlic clove (finely chopped)
• 1 red onion (sliced)
• 2 medium-sized portobello mushrooms (substitute with other mushrooms if you wish, Shitake mushrooms are a good alternative)  
• Goji berries
• Extra-virgin oil coconut oil (can use other healthy types of vegetable oil)
• 2-3 tsp soy sauce (adjust accordingly to taste)
• Water

Cook your millet separately while you prepare your mushroom broth.  Heat the oil in the wok, and add garlic and onion to stir-fry.  Then add some water to keep them cooking as the oil dries up fast.  This is to allow their flavours to permeate into the broth before adding the mushrooms.  Once you are satisfied with the broth, add your millet which should be moderately moist to facilitate its mixing into the broth.  Simmer it for a while before sprinkling with Goji berries and spraying with soy sauce for taste.  I left Goji berries to the last step because I didn't want them to be too soft (and they typically turn soft fast!).  Serve with raw baby spinach greens.