Cream of Mushroom soup

Here's another good recipe... apparently. Actually, mushrooms tend to set off my asthma, even when cooked, but this stuff smells great, and my wife is always asking me to make it. The blending is not necessary, but I made up this recipe when my wife had her wisdom teeth out, so I wanted it to be smooth. It works really well done this way, and has a nice consistency.

Ingredients:

• 1/4 c. butter
• 2 c. milk
• 1 c. water
• 1 lb. portabella mushrooms, chopped (I use the "baby bellas")
• 3 cubes chicken or veggie boullion (if you think this will be too salty, add one at a time)
• 1/2 c. grated mozzarella
• 2 T flour
• 1/2 to 1 onion (depends on the size and how much you like onions- I use the big yellow sweet ones.)
• salt (I use Lawry's Seasoned Salt)
• white pepper
• garlic (i use the already-chopped-in-oil kind, a heaping teaspoon of it, but we're garlic people)

Dee-rections:
Melt the butter in a soup pot and mix in flour with a wire whisk. Add the milk slowly, and knock apart any lumps. bring this to a low boil and add the onion, garlic, and boullion. Continue to simmer until the onions are clear and the boullion is all mixed in, stirring often. Add the mozzarella and stir it in.

The sauce will be pretty thick at this point, so add in a little of the water and the all of the mushrooms. As the mushrooms cook, they'll release water, so be careful not to add too much water initially. You can always add more. Let the soup cook down for a while, and add salt and pepper to taste. Taste it (or get a helper to taste it) to see if it's yummy.

OPTIONAL: At this point, stick it in the blender and blend it on a medium setting until it's smooth and beautiful.

ALSO OPTIONAL: You can add either white wine or a small amount of good scotch whiskey (I've tried several, and the only one that didn't seem to work was Cutty Sark- but then it doesn't even taste good by itself) to this for extra fun beautiful-ness.

YER DONE!

Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup is used in the United States as a general utility food to help glue simple casseroles together.

For example: if you combine one can of Cream of Mushroom soup with one can of tuna and one bag of slightly firm egg noodles in a casserole dish, cover it with a crusty topping, and bake for 45 minutes at 350 degrees, you get a tuna noodle casserole.

Or you can take slice up 5 or 6 potatoes, and mix with a pound of cheese and a can of the aforementioned soup. Add the crust and bake as above and the result is Potatoes au Gratin.

The general rule is: a Starchy food + a flavor + one can CoM soup + a crust = a casserole. The condensed soup provides everything that is necessary to hold the casserole together and adds to the general creaminess. The crust can be a number of substances. My mother always used Italian breadcrumbs, but I have also seen crushed potato chips used for this purpose.

All these foods are simple enough for a bachelor but make enough food to feed a family. This makes Cream of Mushroom soup a good choice for the kitchen emergency shelf.