Cream of porcini soup

This looks like one of my mother's more recent recipes. Serves 4:

1 knob butter
1 finely chopped onion
500 g flat mushrooms (finely sliced)
50 g dried porcini (soaked)
4 bashed cloves garlic
1 glass white wine
1 l fresh chicken stock or tinned consommé diluted 50/50 with water
100 ml crème fraiche

Soak porcini in hot water until soft. Melt butter in large saucepan & add next 4 ingredients. Turn down heat & cover. Cook gently for 20 m. Add white wine & reduce by 1/2. Add stock & bring to boil. Simmer 10 m & add cream. Remove heat. Liquidise in small batches and return to clean pan. Season with salt and pepper.

Iced mushroom soup

This is another "lost" recipe: just the title appears in my mother's recipe book. I have a vague recollection of her making it. I would imagine onions, mushrooms and cream would be the primary ingredients. Black speckles on beige in a white tureen with the ice cubes clinking.

Blyton breakfast

"Porridge and cream," said the woman. "And our own cured bacon and our own eggs. Our own honey and the bread I bake myself. Will that do? And coffee with cream?"

"I could hug you." said Julian, beaming at her.

***

A wonderful smell came creeping into the little dining-room, followed by the inn-woman carrying a large tray. On it was a steaming tureen of porridge, a bowl of golden syrup, a jug of very thick cream, and a dish of bacon and eggs, all piled high on crisp brown toast. Little mushrooms were on the same dish.

"It's like magic!" said Anne, staring. "Just the very things I longed for!"

***

"Toast, marmalade and butter to come, and the coffee and hot milk," said the woman, busily setting everything out. "And if you want any more bacon and eggs, just ring the bell."

"Too good to be true!" said Dick, looking at the table.

Mushrooms on toast

I was once contemplating making this for a late evening meal when Granny rang. I told her, rather smugly, of my plan for supper and she was most impressed. Whether I then made it that evening I am not sure.

It is based on a Nigel Slater idea in "Fast Food" - although I suspect he would be the first to deny that it is a recipe.

INGREDIENTS:

Sliced mushrooms

Finely chopped onion

Olive oil - for frying

Double cream

Some fresh parsley

Possibly a scrap of bacon

Toast

METHOD:

Heat the oil and gently fry the onions. Add the mushrooms; I think they should be slightly crisp. Add the bacon if you're adding it. Then the cream and let it all bubble and reduce. Pour on to the toast and eat immediately.

A short cut to mushrooms

Hobbits, Tolkien tells us, are very fond of mushrooms. The author himself admitted that it was one of the things that made him know he had plenty in common with hobbits. An early chapter in "Lord of the Rings", before the shadows lengthen, is called "A Short Cut to Mushrooms". At one point a basket is produced "from which the unmistakable scent of mushrooms was rising". I have never thought of mushrooms as having a scent. Be that as it may, their earthy, half meat and half vegetable nature seems to me to make them obvious fodder for the likes of Frodo and Bilbo, in their hole in the ground.

Nigel Slater has provided a delicious late supper involving mushrooms in the first book of his that I ever encountered, "Real Fast Food". Mushrooms on toast. I recall impressing Granny when she asked one evening what I was having for supper and I told her this. I cannot promise that it is an exact replica of what he says in the book but so much the better he would doubtless say.

Fry and brown your sliced mushrooms in butter. Add some thinly sliced shallot and, perhaps, a few lardons, but they are by no means essential. Then stir in a significant amount of double cream, let it bubble briefly, and serve on toast.