Shroom Convention

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That’s what you get when you go completely down to earth. An excellent mix for a delicious stew! (Rcp# 78)

Ingredients for Shroom Convention

  • 10 medium-sized cremini mushrooms
  • 3–5 medium shiitake mushrooms
  • 3–4 large king oyster mushrooms
  • 2 parsley roots
  • 2–3 parsnips (50 g, cleaned, ends trimmed)
  • Two layers of fennel bulb (50 g)
  • 1 handful of cauliflower florets, cleaned and cut into pieces (about 100 g)
  • 1 handful of green beans (100g), cleaned, ends chopped off and cut into 2–3 cm pieces
  • One large handful of frozen Hokkaido pumpkin chunks (about 100 g; frozen pumpkin flesh, without the seeds or peel).
  • 1 sprig of rosemary
  • 3 large sage leaves
  • One large ginger ‘toe’, washed and cut into three or four thick slices (with peel).
  • 600 ml of broth (see the [‘AnyBroth’] recipe).
  • Freshly ground nutmeg
  • 2 tablespoons of dark balsamic vinegar
  • 1 teaspoon of salt
  • 1 teaspoon of chopped parsley (fresh or frozen).
  • 1 teaspoon of chopped basil (fresh or frozen).
  • A hint of bear’s garlic (in oil or dried, about the size of the tip of a knife or less).
  • 1 tablespoon of dried, crumbled rose petals, or 2 rose buds from a tea shop

Cooking Instructions for ‘Shroom Convention’

  1. Place the rose petals in a tea bag and pour boiling water over them to make a tea. Stir, then add half a teaspoon of olive oil.
  2. Sauté the cleaned bean pieces, parsley root slices and cauliflower florets together with canola oil in a 3–4 litre soup pot, then remove and set aside on a plate or in a bowl.
  3. Clean the mushrooms, then separate the heads from the stems. Cut the stems into pieces of an equal thickness.
  4. Sauté the mushroom stems with the ginger slices and rosemary twig. Remove the mushroom stems and leave the ginger and rosemary in the pot. Turn off the heat.
  5. Pour 500 ml of boiling water from an electric kettle into the pot, reheat it, then add the pumpkin chunks, grated parsnips and finely minced fennel. Cook everything through for 10–12 minutes (depending on the size of the parsnip pieces), then turn off the heat.
  6. Remove the rosemary and ginger (saving the ginger and setting it aside on a plate), then blend the pumpkin, fennel and parsnips together in the pot.
  7. Add 600 ml of broth, bring to the boil, then add the ginger again. Put in the quartered mushroom heads and simmer for 5 minutes.
  8. Add the pre-cooked mushroom stems, beans, cauliflower florets and parsley root slices. Simmer on a medium heat for a further 5–8 minutes, then turn off the heat.
  9. Add 1–2 tablespoons of dark balsamic vinegar, 1 tablespoon of olive oil, 1 teaspoon each of parsley and basil, the cooled-down rose tea, salt, freshly ground nutmeg, and a hint of bear’s garlic.
  10. Leave to rest for 5 minutes and remove the ginger.

This makes 3–4 servings.

Side Notes:

  1. The idea of using roses came to me when I first made and ate this soup (I developed the recipe freehand). I imagined a garden late in the year with the iconic ‘last rose’, bright and beautiful against the fading colours of fall.
  2. Yes, you can use roses from your garden in this stew. However, they must be completely free of poison (so if you have sprayed them with chemicals or other poisonous substances to get rid of aphids, for example, you cannot use them) and only certain types of rose will work here. I have used the petals and leaves of my natural English roses in my cooking. They have a full fragrance with an earthy quality. That’s what you need here, not perfume-like scents.

Please note: For all my recipes (text) on this blog (By MagS, Parsley-Lane Blog) I grant a CC license under the terms of BY-NC-SA 4.0 (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike). For further explanations, please see the Legal Notice or visit creativecommons.org.