Indian Mushroom Soup - Heat Up Your Winter!

Rating: Easy, and not very time consuming!

I'll start off with a soup, because it's a nice way to start any day or any multi-course meal. This is a well spiced soup, but it's fairly mild. Personally, I don't handle extremely hot spices very well! So, don't be worried about that if it's a concern. This is a well spiced soup, but not too hot. It's extremely flavorful and is a definite delight at varying degrees of thickness.

Indian Mushroom Soup
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
1 full-size carrot (or 4-6 babies), finely chopped
2 stalks celery, finely chopped
3 gloves garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon cumin
2 teaspoons coriander

2 bay leaves
3 cups flat field mushrooms, coarsely chopped with stalks removed
*4 cups vegetable stock
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh cilantro
1/2 cup non-dairy yogurt or soygurt

Heat the oil in a large saucepan. Add the onion, carrot, celery, garlic, spices and bay leaves. Cook on low heat for about 5 minutes, or until the vegetables are soft. While the vegetables are cooking, prepare a medium saucepan with the vegetable stock. Add the mushrooms to the other vegetables and continue cooking, while stirring occasionally, on low heat for about another 8 minutes. Pour in stock and bring to a boil. *If you desire, you may add less stock to have a slightly thicker end product - I would only suggest 1/2 cup less. Simmer for about 15 minutes until the mushrooms are nicely cooked. Remove the saucepan from heat and let cool. Remove and discard the bay leaves from the mix.

The mixture will still have a decent amount of heat to it. For this reason I don't recommend using a blender. If you don't have a food processor let the mixture cool as much as possible and separate it into batches to blend. The heat and pressure will cause a large mess! Use a food processor if available, but you may still want to process in a couple batches depending on the size of your processor. Process soup until smooth. Return mixture to saucepan and stir in the chopped cilantro. Pour your soup into bowls with a ladle and serve with a dollop of soygurt and garnish with a cilantro leaf if available. If your soup is not very thick, or you have too heavy a dollop of your soygurt it will sink (like mine, ha!) and won't make a great visual garnish. It will still give you a few spoonfuls of added creamy deliciousness! If you are keen on the soygurt garnish, add less stock as noted. Enjoy!