Magical 'shroom soup

Well, hello! Magical 'shroom catch your eye? :)

As tantalizing as that sounds, we're really talking about the soup here. Fabulous tasty mushrooms that made for a magical soup!

So, the mushroom love is stronger than ever around here - even Vodka is on mushrooms now! His holistic vet suggested, no, insisted that he start consuming a medicinal mushroom mix - beefs up the immune system, restores body balance, support natural killer cell activity, all that good stuff. In fact, there are volumes of research about medicinal mushrooms here, here ... and here. I'm sure there are a zillion other sites out there talking about similar stuff.

So, I'll eventually get around to talking more about holistic meds and pooches and immunity and chinese herbs and all that good stuff pretty soon. In the meantime, let's just focus on this simple and delightful mushroom soup :)

Deborah Madison has a yummy Cream of Mushroom Soup recipe in Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone - sounded a tad bit heavy, so I decided to rework it a bit. Obviously, the white mushrooms were replaced by criminis - so much richer and earthier, don't you think? And the cream was quickly replaced by some fabulous Quark.

Quark is pretty prevalent in Europe, but is still hard to come by in the U.S. Luckily, for us in the Pacific Northwest, we have Appel Farms in Ferndale, WA - they sell their Quark at PCC. This midly, creamy curd cheese is so flavourful and makes for a fabulous cheesecake [take that as an impending recipe warning! :)] Plus, Vodka is pretty much hooked onto it, what with its high protein content and anecdotal cancer-fighting properties when combined with flax-seed oil [take that an impending pooch-nutrition blog warning!]

Finally, a handful of fresh herbs perfectly complimented the 'shroom flavours and balanced out the earthiness.

'Shroom Soup with Curd Cheese
'Creamy shroomy goodness!

Servings: 4-6

1 lb crimini mushrooms
1 t butter
1 cup chopped leeks
4 garlic cloves - chopped
4 sprigs of lemon thyme - stripped from the stems
1 T flour
1 quart of water (OR water+nonfat milk OR mushroom stock)
1/2-1 cup nonfat Quark cheese
Finely chopped parsley and chives
1 T goat cheese
salt and freshly ground pepper

Mix up the goat cheese with the chives and parsley and set aside while the soup is being made. This gives the goat cheese enough time to absorb the flavours of the herbs.

Coarsely chop the lot of mushrooms, after setting a few aside for garnish (if desired).
Melt the butter in a soup pot and lightly sauté the leeks, garlic and thyme in it for a few minutes.
Throw in 1/2 t salt and 1/2 cup of water and cook covered over medium heat for 3-4 minutes.

Raise the heat, throw in the chopped mushrooms and cook for 4-5 minutes.
Now, stir in the flour, add the water (or stock) and bring to a boil.
Lower the heat and simmer, partially covered, for about 15-20 minutes.

Coarsely puree the soup, return it to the pot and stir in the Quark cheese. Season with salt and pepper while keeping the soup warm.

If you set aside some mushrooms for garnish, now is a good time to sauté them over high heat in a bit of butter - it should take 4-5 minutes for the mushrooms to get colored and mildly crispy [this is seriously tasty stuff!]

Check for seasoning before serving topped with the herbed goat cheese.



Opinion?

A plain-looking soup that explodes with flavour! I can see this being a great winter warmer when made with cream, but the lighter, thinner version was the perfect warmer for a rainy Seattle evening :)

I'd love to say I grew the mushrooms, but I obviously didn't! But I did get the chives and parsley from my veggie patch! Which means I get to ship this post off to Wiffy of Noob Cook for this round of Grow Your Own [that happy event started by Andrea!]

Eat a cheesecake pop, will you?

When I first read about cheesecake pops being the DB challenge for April, it took me a while to figure out what these crazy things were. I had to read and re-read the recipe before understanding how these pops got done. They're made of cheesecake, but there's more to them. They look like lollipops, but that isn't what they are. They need to be frozen, but they are not icecream. They're a crazy olio of dessert techniques leading up to these really fun looking finger foods! Crazy, eh? There's a DB challenge for you :)

This month's challenge was organized by Elle (Feeding My Enthusiasm) and Deborah (Taste and Tell)- they picked these funky cheesecake pops from Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey by Jill O'Connor. Seriously, this is the perfect title for a book that has a recipe for cheesecake pops! They're gooey all right, was quite a bit messy assembling them, sticky - a bit ... chewy - somewhat :) I've never baked anything from this book before, now I'm totally intrigued about what other quirky recipes it contains!

These cheesecake pops make for the perfect party food. And given that tomorrow is Vodka's b'day, I decided to tailor these for him. A few pops got the prescribed chocolate dunk, but a few others were set aside for Vodka - they got a yummy crust of sliced almonds in a vodka-honey sauce. That's the tradition - for the 9th year running - the pooch gets a Vodka-based dessert on his birthday :)

This was actually a really simple and straightforward recipe - a basic cheesecake baked using a water bath. There is plenty of flexibility in the dipping flavours and colours which was fun! I ended up going for the traditional cheesecake balls instead of any fancy geometric shapes, but the fun started with the dipping and decorations. The first few got dunked in semisweet chocolate and topped with sprinkles - very festive! And then Vodka's preferences took over - which made for a big hit!

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Cheesecake Pops
(based on Jill O'Connor's recipe from Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey)

Makes 30 – 40 Pops

5 8-oz. packages cream cheese at room temperature
2 cups sugar
¼ cup all-purpose flour
¼ teaspoon salt
5 large eggs
2 egg yolks
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
¼ cup heavy cream
Boiling water as needed
Thirty to forty 8-inch lollipop sticks
1 pound chocolate, finely chopped – you can use all one kind or half and half of dark, milk, or white (Alternately, you can use 1 pound of flavored coatings, also known as summer coating, confectionary coating or wafer chocolate – candy supply stores carry colors, as well as the three kinds of chocolate.)
2 tablespoons vegetable shortening
(Note: White chocolate is harder to use this way, but not impossible)
Assorted decorations such as chopped nuts, colored jimmies, crushed peppermints, mini chocolate chips, sanding sugars, dragees) - Optional

Position oven rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 325 degrees F. Set some water to boil.

In a large bowl, beat together the cream cheese, sugar, flour, and salt until smooth. If using a mixer, mix on low speed. Add the whole eggs and the egg yolks, one at a time, beating well (but still at low speed) after each addition. Beat in the vanilla and cream.

Grease a 10-inch cake pan (not a springform pan), and pour the batter into the cake pan. Place the pan in a larger roasting pan. Fill the roasting pan with the boiling water until it reaches halfway up the sides of the cake pan. Bake until the cheesecake is firm and slightly golden on top, 35 to 45 minutes.

Remove the cheesecake from the water bath and cool to room temperature. Cover the cheesecake with plastic wrap and refrigerate until very cold, at least 3 hours or up to overnight.

When the cheesecake is cold and very firm, scoop the cheesecake into 2-ounce balls and place on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Carefully insert a lollipop stick into each cheesecake ball. Freeze the cheesecake pops, uncovered, until very hard, at least 1 – 2 hours.

When the cheesecake pops are frozen and ready for dipping, prepare the chocolate. In the top of a double boiler, set over simmering water, or in a heatproof bowl set over a pot of simmering water, heat half the chocolate and half the shortening, stirring often, until chocolate is melted and chocolate and shortening are combined. Stir until completely smooth. Do not heat the chocolate too much or your chocolate will lose it’s shine after it has dried. Save the rest of the chocolate and shortening for later dipping, or use another type of chocolate for variety.

Alternately, you can microwave the same amount of chocolate coating pieces on high at 30 second intervals, stirring until smooth.

Quickly dip a frozen cheesecake pop in the melted chocolate, swirling quickly to coat it completely. Shake off any excess into the melted chocolate. If you like, you can now roll the pops quickly in optional decorations. You can also drizzle them with a contrasting color of melted chocolate (dark chocolate drizzled over milk chocolate or white chocolate over dark chocolate, etc.) Place the pop on a clean parchment paper-lined baking sheet to set. Repeat with remaining pops, melting more chocolate and shortening (or confectionary chocolate pieces) as needed.

Refrigerate the pops for up to 24 hours, until ready to serve.

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Allowed Variations

Yes you can make some changes to this cheesecake as long as you promise to use the basic cheesecake recipe (although you can add a flavor to it if you like) and do keep it white (sorry, no chocolate or coffee or mocha), and keep the pops to the 2 ounce size.

The dipping flavors and colors are completely up to you.

If you want to use decorations, go for it. Same with drizzles and ribbons on the sticks. Or leave them plain after dipping them. You can even dip them in graham cracker crumbs and then the chocolate – to get more of the cheesecake feel to them.

You can cut the cheesecake into geometric shapes instead of making balls…triangles or squares or diamonds…just keep them about 2 ounces each. We can't wait to see what combinations our Daring Baker come up with…just make sure to use the basic cheesecake recipe, to make the pops 2 ounces or close to that in size, and to dip each pop in chocolate or confectionary coating and have it on a lollipop stick.

Opinion?

This isn't my typical kind of dessert, I'm not even a big cheesecake fan, but these things turned out pretty good! I was afraid the cheesecake was going to be super dense, but it was actually pretty light - probably courtesy of a couple of changes I made to the recipe - I used neufchatel cheese instead of regular cream cheese, I skipped the egg yolk and heavy cream in favour of a couple of tablespoons of silken tofu - these made for a much lighter cheesecake! Dipping the pops in chocolate was a cinch, rolling them in sprinkles and nuts was ... a piece of cake! :)


The best part of it all was that Vodka absolutely loved his treats and then sat around licking his chops for a while after! :)



Thanks, Elle & Deborah for this really really fun challenge. I had a blast and Vodka is thrilled to bits - nothing like making a pooch happy on his birthday!

And now it is time for me to stay up all night checking out all the other awesome DB posts!