Plan Change

The outcome of the disaster that I had with my Chicken Stock the other day was that I ended up with the most delicious cauldron of Cream of Mushroom Soup. How? Well, I remade a stock using a Turkey carcass that I specially bought (for 55cents) and added a load of Mushrooms from my fridge that were very near the end of their shelflife and blitzed it all together with a whole unopened tub of Creme Fraiche that was a good couple of weeks out-of-date! Everything was fine and I'm still alive!! Use-by dates??? Somewhat of a con I think. It's all gone now, having been devoured two bowls or more at a time but it has set me thinking. Creamed Mushroom is an exquisite flavour; one that is used as the basis of a very famous dish called Chicken Supreme and there's a whole Chicken Breast still on the bone in my fridge. My research into its history has been somewhat disappointing: everybody now "cheats" by using canned Mushroom Soup and I hadn't even managed to find out where the dish originated. Then I turned to Mrs Beeton, here on my bookshelf; a revelation. Probably French, and not a can of soup in sight! Unfortunately, though, quite a complex recipe but I'm going to have a go at it for tomorrow's Sunday Lunch (starting tonight after work).

The best laid plans.....whilst I'm home on time more or less I'm not going to be starting my Chicken dish tonight because I have to eat first and then finish off another Mushroom Soup batch that I started earlier. There was quite a bit of meat recovered from another Turkey Stock pack that I bought earlier today for the princely sum of 56cents so the finished soup is comprised of the strained stock, a glass of White Wine, recovered Turkey Meat, reserved carrot (from the stock) and, I guess, about 250grams of washed Button Mushrooms, including the stalks, all cooked gently until the mushrooms stop shrinking, then blitzed to a puree before adding a good dose (300mls or so) of Double Cream to finish about 3 pints of the stuff. Checked for seasoning, I cooked for a few minutes more to draw the flavour of some additional Ground Black Pepper.