French food focus-About living and cooking in rural France,recipes,lifestyle,comments

FRENCH FOOD FOCUS Latest Post Other Posts Recent Older Truffles Cassoulet Index of Recipes L inks House Sitters FiFi About me About 'My' France Comments to: yankinparisot@gmail.com Archives		Life in rural France - Food - Friends - Wine - Cheese - Comments Welcome to French Food Focus. The name describes the intent of this blog. I'll focus on food and because I live in rural France the stress will be upon French food. There are numerous posts concerning life in France and, certainly, opinions about anything that strikes my fancy. If you have some good recipes or if you want to rave about any great French restaurants this is the place to do it. I hope you enjoy my ramblings about rural France! Click Here to send me a comment
		This is our village. Our house is the white one at the top right.
	Simple Mushroom Soup Another dismal day weather wise. Some good stuff though. Lo & behold the local Hypermarket got in some Irish beef. Whoopee! Those of you who have followed this blog for a while will know that although I like most things French beef isn't one of them. The French seem to prefer their beef with no marbling and no aging in other words - tough. Every so often the markets get in some British or Irish beef which is far more to our taste. (fortunately, the French have this law which makes sure that all meats & vegetables must be marked with their country of origin. Makes it easy to tell,) Not only is it to our taste, but its usually cheaper than French beef. These were bone in rib steaks about a kilo in weight each. Priced at 9.50 Euro per kilo they were a bargain. We bought 4 for the freezer. The other good thing was mushroom soup for dinner. I love good mushroom soup and its very easy to make. If you are reading this early enough in the day where you are to shop. why not go out & buy the simple ingredients you need and make it for dinner tonight. If not that make it for lunch or dinner tomorrow. Here's how you make it. You need: 1/4 pound lardons (if you can't get lardons then take a quarter pound of smoked bacon and cut it into thin strips); about 1 oz butter; 1 pound of plain white mushrooms; 1/8 to 1/4 pound dried wild mushrooms (ceps, bulots, porcini, morels or the like or a mixture), 2 quarts (American) of vegetable stock and about 8 oz full cream. Place the dried mushrooms into a bowl and cover with warm water, then put the lardons in a deep pot & fry while you cut up the white mushrooms. When the mushrooms are cut up add the butter to the pot, let melt then add all of the white mushrooms. Cook with high heat stirring frequently until the mushrooms start to give off their water. When this happens put in the dried mushrooms and their water, stir & cook for a minute or two then add the stock all at once. Bring this to a boil then turn the heat way down and in an immersion mixer to pur? the soup. (if you don't have an immersion mixer use a food processor or blender. If you don't have either of those either then chop both the white & dried mushroom up very finely before the cooking process). Once pureed add the cream, stir and adjust seasoning if necessary. That's it. Delicious, low in calories (well Ok the cream doesn't help.) and inexpensive because you don't use a lot of the expensive types of mushrooms. Serve with some really good bread. We had some of the no knead bread. I made a new loaf today just to try the recipe again. If you make this please let me have your verdict.