Mmm Mmm Marla's Mushroom Mash!

Here's another one of my talented friend's delicious Soup Recipe. We are trying to name them as we eat them and Mmm Mmm Marla's Mushroom Mash! is certainly fitting. The exclamation point is part of the title.

So straight from Marla, how to make one of the best soups I've ever tasted:

First, I took enough of the garlic cloves you get in the big bags from Chinatown to cover the bottom of a 9" pie plate, and roasted them slowly covered in olive oil until they were gorgeous and smushy and sweet.

That went in the bottom of my soup pot, to which I added a little more olive oil, a good hunk of butter, three medium onions, coarsely chopped. I simmered that for 10 - 15 minutes, until the onions were golden and there were starting to be lovely little browned crusty bits of garlic skating around the bottom.

While that was happening, I took four large sweet peppers, sliced and roasted them under the broiler until the skins were black and easy to peel off.

Then, I chopped about a grocery bag full of various mushrooms, plus about six large Portobello mushrooms and added them to the pot, and liberally salted, peppered and added a handful of Emeril's Rustic Rub (you can google the recipe for that, or choose your own spices). At that time I added the peeled roasted peppers.

This simmered, with occasional stirring, for about 50 minutes until it cooked down quite a bit.

Now, here is where I would normally have added vegetable stock - but since I didn't have any but PC Organic (which has wheat and soy ingredients), I tried water.

But you should add vegetable stock, and let it simmer another ten minutes at least.

Use a stick blender, or transfer to to a regular blender, and puree until as smoooth or as chunky as you like, and cook a little longer.

Add cream and more butter to taste, and more rub to taste.

Now, because we had to be gluten-free for the swap, it still tasted too thin with the water, and I panicked. So, I cooked down another big bag of mushrooms, more onions, butter, rub, roasted and fresh garlic and added extra garlic powder, plus a whole bunch of chopped parsley and the rinds from some Parmesano Reggiano, and added that in and mixed it all with the stick blender, added it in and re-mixed it all together. That made it better - but veg stock is what I needed.