Poland: Mushroom Soup

I couldn't let my holiday vacation start without making one last legitimate global blog effort.

A few weeks ago, when I meant to get back on track, I tried my luck with the wine bag of fun and drew Poland. Immediately, my mind flooded with memories of the best thing I ate when I was in the country - mushroom soup.

(And seriously ... I did not cheat this time. I really pulled out Poland!)

Anyway ... I visited Poland when I was in college on a tour for college newspaper editors. The trip involved spending two weeks riding around on a tour bus through three different countries with people I didn't know, but shared some sort of odd passion with. That's the same trip that took me to Israel. Anyone who ever worked at one knows it takes an interesting person to run a college newspaper. We had a whole bus full of them.

Poland was the first country we hit, the first phase of the trip when everyone was still feeling each other out out to determine who would be the most fun and who would, well, be a little creepy.

We visited Auschwitz and Warsaw and Krakow. I remember seeing the old ghettos, walking through a beautiful rose garden dedicated to Chopin and touring the castle where all of the Polish kings are buried. Then there was some story about a fire breathing dragon that went after sheep and young virgins until being defeated by a noble young suitor. I still find that story amusing for some reason. Maybe because there's a large, metal statue that spits fire at the castle in the dragon's honor. I didn't see a memorial to the dashing young suitor.

But anyway...

I'm sure we ate all of the standard Polish fare - kielbasa, pierogis - the few days we were there. But the only thing I remember eating was the mushroom soup. Maybe that was because I found it warm and comforting when everything else around me was kind of odd and unfamiliar.

It was a day or two into the trip, but we were running around doing and seeing so much it felt like we had been at it forever. I remember it was cool and dark outside when the bus pulled up at this dimly lit tavern. I was tired and drained, overwhelmed and still a little jet lagged when I took my seat at the long wooden table with the people I barely knew for my pri fixe dinner.

The soup was probably a starter to some other standard Polish meal, but it's the thing I remember most about being in Poland. That and the dragon.

It came in a bread bowl that absorbed the yummy juices from the mushrooms. It was somewhat creamy but with big chunks of delicious wild mushrooms, apparently a big staple in the Polish diet.

I don't know where we ate it, or what exactly was in it, but it stands out in my memory as one of the best things I've ate in my life. Seriously. Maybe it was just my memory.

So soup was the first thing I thought of when I pulled Poland out of the wine bag. Finding an awesome mushroom soup recipe.

I studied different versions on the Net and came up with my own that seemed to combine some of the best flavors, and then some. I used a combination of dried porcini (extremely flavorful), shitake and portobello mushrooms.

It's pretty good, but still doesn't stand up to the one I remember. I guess all good things come with practice.

Polish mushroom soup

6 tbsps. butter
3 yellow onions

6 carrots, chopped

4 stalks of celery chopped
1 cup Italian parsley, chopped

1 cup fresh dill, chopped

1/2 cup thyme, chopped

1/2 cup rosemary, chopped

3 bay leafs (dried)

2 oz. dried porcini mushrooms, chopped

1/2 lb. shitake mushrooms, chopped

3 large portobello mushroom caps, chopped

8 cups beef broth

Salt, pepper

2 cups sour cream

2 cups whole milk

1 loaf sourdough bread

What to do:

Bring half of the beef stock to a boil. When it is boiling, add the dried porcini mushrooms to "reconstitute them." Cook for about five minutes and then let drain, saving the even more yummy beef broth for later.

Melt 3 tbsps. of the butter in a pot and then saute the onions until soft, about five minutes. Add the carrots and celery and then let look for about 10 minutes. Season with some salt and pepper.

Meanwhile, melt the rest of the butter in a saute pan. Add all of the chopped mushrooms and let cook for about five minutes until soft.

Add the mushrooms to the other vegetables and stir in the herbs. Add the beef broth - both the reserved and the rest - and bring to a boil. Let simmer for about 30 minutes.

After the soup has simmered some over low heat, add the sour cream and milk. Add salt and pepper to taste. Let cook over low heat until ready to serve. The soup will thicken as it cooks. Serve with crusty bread.

Germany: Holiday non-traditions

This week I got an e-mail from my uncle inquiring about German holiday traditions. Apparently my nine-year-old (soon to be ten-year-old) cousin is working on a class project that involves researching the food and desserts of her heritage. Me being an advocate of education, food (especially desserts) and different cultures, helping her was right up my alley.

Given that - as noted before - my family is made up of bad Germans, we didn't really have any cultural holiday traditions. So I turned to some of my German friends for answers. It then only seemed appropriate to make a virtual return to the homeland to blog about it.

The first person I hit up was one of my editors who lived in Germany for a few years. He suggested something I later learned is a Feuerzanger Bowle, which involves heating red wine and traditional holiday spices in a fondue-like pot. Sounds like a pretty good idea, but perhaps not appropriate for an elementary school holiday celebration. (Although, I'd be amused to score an invite to that party and write a story about it.)

I then turned to my friend Nina, who was born in Germany, for some more kid-appropriate suggestions. She came through big time with some of her holiday favorites.

Without further ado ...

Stollen: This appears to be a yeast bread filled with nuts, currants, etc. Kind of like a fruit cake, I guess. And what do you know, Food Network gives us this recipe from Sara Moulton's old show. (I actually met Sara Moulton on one occasion ... this was before my current heyday of stalking celebrity chefs. We'll save that story for another blog posting).

Springerle: These are anise flavored sugar cookies made with molds to create intricate impressions on them.

Brat Apfel: Baked apples. Pretty self explanatory. Some of the "recipes" I found for baking apples involve serving them with ice cream, caramel or cinnamon.

Lebkuchen: Cookie (apparently Germans like cookies) similar to gingerbread, but softer. The Internet abounds with recipes.

And of course, Germans can be credited with coming up with Advent calendars, the Christmas tree and gingerbread houses (in the spirit of Hansel and Gretel).

I guess that means we weren't terrible Germans. We did do all of that. In fact, we used to go over to my Grandma's house when we were little and decorate a little gingerbread house. And last year, my sister decided to resurrect this tradition and we did a house on Christmas with Grandma. The difference is now my sister and her boyfriend take their cookie baking and gingerbread house making quite seriously, a warning to Bobby Flay if he ever comes around looking for a Throwdown.