‘I can smell fall dancing in the breeze’

Finland is slowly transitioning into a beautiful autumn setting, all the leaves are changing colour and the forests are filled with amazing mushrooms and lingonberry. The air is crisp in the mornings, although lately during the day, the weather has been almost 20 degrees celsius. It has been an exceptionally warm fall and in a way, it feels like it is only starting! Today I went for some forest therapy with my mother and came home with a basket filled with porcini and yellowfoot chanterelles so I thought I would make a comforting soup for supper with sautéed porcini on top. The soup takes about 20minutes to make with a lovely sweet flavour to it topped with the perfect fresh porcini.

Soup ingredients

• 1/2 broccoli (including stems)
• about 5-7 brussel sprouts
• 1/2 sweet potato
• 2 garlic cloves
• 1 shallot
• 1 cup cream
• 1 large dollop of butter for cooking
• 1-2 cups chicken stock
• 1 cup parmesan cheese
• black pepper/salt/ chili flakes

Directions

Heat a sauce pan with a generous amount of butter. Add to this the roughly chopped the garlic, shallot, brussel sprouts broccoli and sweet potato. Let it cook in the butter with the lid on for about 7 minutes before adding the chicken stock. Let it simmer gently for about 10 minutes. Remove from heat;with a handheld blender pulse the soup into a smooth texture. Place back on heat and add the cream, parmesan and seasoning. Let it gently intensify in flavour for about 10-15 minutes before serving.

Once the soup is ready, sauté the porcini in butter and season with salt and pepper. Place the porcini on top of the soup and drizzle a bit of olive oil, lemon zest, black pepper, basil and finely chopped brussel sprouts on top.

Also, try some porcini toast, see recipe here.