Every single cook in the world needs a back-pocket recipe to rely on. One that's there for us when we stupidly invited friends over for dinner at the end of an exhausting week. One that comes together in mere minutes but punches way above its weight class. Even Patricia Wells, a veteran expat cookbook author who seems to have perfected a Francophone lifestyle, isn't an exception to this rule.
For her, the gap between our best entertaining intentions and hectic harsh reality is bridged bycreamy mushroom soup. "I call this crowd-pleasing soup my magic recipe," she writes in her new cookbook,My Master Recipes. "It is so amazing that so few ingredients—and a soup made in a matter of minutes—can have so much depth of flavor."
Indeed, this soup does seem like sorcery. There's no chopping, no sautéing, and barely any simmering. And there are hardly any ingredients to speak of. You just heat heavycreamand dried porcini mushrooms (an umami-bomb ingredient that you can find in many grocery stores andonline) you've blitzed in a spice grinder, let them infuse off the heat for a half hour, and then add chicken stock and salt. That's it.
Sure, you can garnish with some sliced chives or some nice olive oil. You can even add some sliced raw button mushrooms to the soup as it simmers. But the beauty of this soup is that you don't really need embellishments to make the soup addictive. Because when the soup you're serving is made by magic, it pretty much sells itself.
