Hello, my name is Jhames

Fall is a perfect time for mushrooms! And with the rainy season having arrived in Seattle there is no better way to keep warm than with wild mushroom & roasted garlic soup. This recipe takes over an hour to prepare but the taste is well worth the wait. I heartily recommend this recipe with warm, crusty bread and a good movie.

First you’ll need to roast the garlic before you get cracking on the soup. If you prep all your ingredients before you start cooking, the overall cooking time will greatly decrease. I know most people work as they read but you will save yourself a lot of grief if you read through the recipe, prep the ingredients, and then start cooking.

Ingredients

• 3 garlic bulbs
• 2 Tbsp olive oil, divided
• Chopped fresh oregano
• Salt & pepper
• 3/4 cup barley
• 1 1/2 cup water
• 3 Tbsp vegan butter (or margarine)
• 2 medium onions, chopped
• 2 large carrots, chopped
• 2 lbs mushrooms (chanterelles taste fantastic with this recipe)
• 5 cups vegetable broth
• 2 Tbsp chopped fresh oregano
• 2 Tbsp chopped fresh Italian (flat-leaf) parsley
• 1 Tbsp chopped fresh rosemary

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Roast the garlic

1. Slice tops off garlic heads; place in a piece of foil.
2. Drizzle with the olive oil; sprinkle with chopped oregano and salt & pepper.
3. Seal foil packet; bake about 45 minutes.
4. Allow the garlic to cool before you extract the roasted cloves from the bulbs. Invert the bulbs over a bowl and squeeze out the cloves. If any olive oil drips into the bowl, that’s okay.

Cook the barley

1. Boil barley in the water in a small saucepan for 30 minutes.
2. Reserve both water and barley.

Make the soup!

1. Heat vegan butter in a large stockpot.
2. Add onion and carrot; sauté until tender.
3. Heat remaining oil in large skillet; add mushrooms and cook over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally, until tender and the liquid has been reabsorbed. Remove mushrooms from heat.
4. Add broth and roasted garlic to the stockpot. Simmer onion and carrot in the broth until very soft (about 5 minutes).
5. Purée the onion and carrot mixture with your immersion blender.
6. Purée half the mushrooms; add all mushrooms to stockpot.
7. Stir in barley and its cooking water. Simmer soup over low heat with lid tilted until barley is totally cooked (about 30 minutes).
8. Stir in chopped herbs; serve after 1 minute.

Tips

• The recipe calls for fresh herbs but you can make do with dried herbs. A general rule of thumb for dried herbs: 1 tsp dry = 1 Tbsp fresh.
• If you don’t have access to chanterelle mushrooms, use a mix of brown button mushrooms and Portobello mushrooms. Do not use dried mushrooms for this soup unless you want to make the Baby Jesus cry.
• If you don’t have vegan butter, olive oil works just as well (and is probably a lot healthier for you).

This soup should make about 8 servings. I don’t know how those servings are portioned out but we’ll go along with the number.