Soups | Finding Feasts

Finding feasts - Wild mushroom soup — Click image for recipe

Warm up this winter with a beautiful wild mushroom soup!

With winter finally arriving in Sydney (although obviously not today as it is going to be 25 degrees!) I decided to celebrate the cold July by throwing a Christmas in July dinner party. Menu planning had begun many weeks ago! Books were gone gone through, magazines pulled, lists made up, list torn up only to be made up again. This was no ordinary dinner, I wanted to show case skill, technique and obviously good hearty dishes. A three course feast was settled on, consisting of entree and main prepared by me and dessert by Blondie.

The menu consisted of…

Entree
Wild Mushroom Soup

Main
Sous vide Chicken, Wilted Greens, Verjuice Butter Sauce

Dessert
Yoghurt Panna Cotta, Poached Pear & Quince, Pecan Crumb & Frozen Chocolate Wind

Being Polish I’m no stranger to soups, they were and still are a daily staple and on the menu at mums place so when it came to the entree for our Christmas in July dinner, Wild mushroom soup was a no brainer decision.

Mum make what I would say one of the most amazing wild mushrooms soups from a recipe that was handed down to her my my fathers mother, my Babcia and whilst its pretty amazing for this dinner I wanted to try something a little more hearty, full of body.

Pen and paper in hand I jumped onto the trusty internet and the research had begun. I must have looked at hundreds of mushroom soup recipes and they all looked very similar to each other until I came across Jamie Oliver’s The Real Mushroom Soup recipe. It looked earthy and full of flavour.

Decision made!

I of course didn’t follow the recipe too the tee, and used my private stash of FinSki’s Saffron Milk Cap and Slipper Jack mushrooms.

I had some tough critics to please that night…the husbands, but the finger licked bowls spoke for themselves.

Will I be making this again…a definite YES!

Bella 🙂

Ham and Pea Pie Floater with Mash Potato… I have gone through, well you don’t need numbers, let’s just say a lifetime without ever having a pie floater. It never really appealed to me, but for some unknown reason the pie floater has been playing on my mind for the past week. The craving for ham and pea soup along with the desire to have a pie and all of a sudden the pie floater made perfect sense!

Looking into the history of this dish I discovered that it is uniquely Australian. Although it’s now labeled a South Australian Heritage Icon by the National Trust of Australia it became popular through Sydney’s Harry’s Cafe De Wheels (which is a must for visiting travellers) Harry’s is a food truck situated at the old graving docks down at Wooloomooloo, which are now the Australian Naval Dockyards.

Back in the Great Depression between 1929-1932 (although it did start a little earlier here in Australia) unemployed workers could go to the local soup kitchens who would serve them the soup of the day (this could be potato, pea or even strawberry soup) with the leftover pie scraps donated from the pie manufacturers in the area. They were able to get a cheap, if not free, nutritious and warming meal for themselves and their family to help sustain them till their next meal, which may not have been for days at a time.

Just looking into the history of this one particular dish you really get to see the extraordinary hardship people/families, for four decades, worldwide went through. It was one event after the other… it’s truly unimaginable. They would only just recover from one event then another one happens to slap you in the face.

WWI : 1914-1918

The Great Depression : 1929-1932

WWII : 1939-1945

It’s really is no wonder that the ‘plastic fantastic’ era of the fifties was embraced – they were given the convenience of gadgets and an easy ‘disposable’ lifestyle, and after all they had been through it’s no surprised that easy living gained such momentum.

…Blondie