Cream of Wild Mushroom Soup

Ingredients:

• Dried wild mushrooms:  I've used various "blends" in the past, but for this soup there's one "must have" mushroom:  chantarelles.  I use a good handful of dried chanterelles.  This year I added about the same amount of dried porcinis.  
• I had about 6 oz fresh shitakes that I couldn't use in time so I had stuck them in the freezer.  The texture of these mushrooms wouldn't be right, but for what I do with them they worked just fine.  Normally I use dried ones.  I pulled and ditched the tough stems.
• You can use bone broth as a base, or just water is fine.   About 1  quart.
• One large stalk celery, chopped
• Handful of baby carrots, chopped.  
• 1Tbs coarse chopped garlic (I use the toasted from a jar) . 
• Stems (clean well!) from 2 pkgs baby portabellas.   (Make stuffed mushrooms from the caps)
• 2c. light cream
• Soy sauce (I like Tamari or Shoyu)
• Thyme,  Basil

Kapusnyak ... Or is that Kartoplyanka?

 

The chill is coming back in the air, and that means it's soup, stew or as I like to call it, schtoop season!  It doesn't look all that great, and I wasn't going for presentation, but the soup above is a take on Ukranian sauerkraut soup:  Kapusnyak.  (Kapusta = cabbage).  I ended up making an almost full 8 quart Dutch oven full of this.  The traditional soup has one potato diced up for starch -- perhaps to cut the tang of the sauerkraut?  I added quite a lot more potato, hence the ? on whether or not to call this potato soup, Kartoplyanka!  It doesn't look too pretty, but it's delish!