RECIPE #10: Mushroom Pumpkin Soup

Happy Halloween, homies! Today, I go to see Macabre and celebrate. Tomorrow, I go to see múm and try to quit cigarettes. Yes, it's true. It's not my health or yours that motivated this decision. It's simply that my wage provider and a certain governor I didn't vote to re-elect have conspired to make smoking too expensive and inconvenient a habit for me to maintain. Offer congratulations if you're so inclined, but know that I am by no means happy about it. In 32 years upon this planet, I have never lived in a cigarette-free environment. My parents both smoked for most of my time at home, the majority of my roommates have smoked and I've been at it since the age of 15, give or take about a year in high school when I switched to a pipe to foster a then-important "eccentric" image. At this point, I'm prepared for a lifetime of sinus infections due to lack of tobacco exposure. Once my senses of taste and smell return, once I become complacent and no longer get pissed at venues for not letting people outside to puff, once I degenerate into one of those whiny bitches who makes a big show out of their disapproval with congregated smokers, once I've ballooned up to 450 pounds and chewed all of my fingernails down to bloody stubs, then ask me if I'm glad I quit, damn it.

Both my Sassy Frassy Lassie and myself recently felt like we were succumbing to seasonal sickness. I never became fully ill, but the lady definitely got something. As a means of boosting our health at a time when we've been eating out a lot (the work week will do that to you), as well as an homage to the harvest of this most excellent of months, I followed a recipe described online as "fairly simple." That's what I wanted. I was feeling so lazy, I used prepared ingredients where I could have done the work myself. And this, my friends, is how to make a fairly simple and extremely delicious mushroom pumpkin soup.

Since I prepared this dish at my girlfriend's place, I had access to different cookware than that to which I'm accustomed. She has a marvelous, sizeable metal pot in which I put the entire thing together, so if you have something similar, I'd suggest using it. The first step is to sauté 1/2 pound of sliced mushrooms and 1/2 cup of chopped onion in oil or butter. Did I say I was lazy? I bought pre-sliced mushrooms, and I'm glad I did because it saved a bunch of time. As Sassy Frass drew herself a bath, I used some olive oil my fabulous lady had handy and cooked them shits right in the pot. Worked like a charm.

When everything was nice and soft, I stirred in 2 tablespoons of flour and 1 tablespoon of curry powder. This created a very pasty mass of earthy-looking gunk on the bottom of the pot, sticking all over the place. Sassy Frass called out that she could smell the curry all the way in the bathtub. Okay, that's just around the corner in her cozy pad, but still, if you cook this yourself, be prepared for a blast of spicy curry goodness. I'm sure the smell would have been even stronger to me if I wasn't a dirty, filthy, ugly, Commie terrorist bastard SMOKER.

One reason I'm glad I put this soup together in one vessel is that the mushroom/onion paste became, as I mentioned, stuck to the bottom of the pot. The next step is to gradually add 3 cups of chicken broth. This performs the function known to cooking types as deglazing, wherein the crusty bits are gently lifted by a small amount of liquid and become part of a saucy new solution. I stirred after adding one cup of broth, and everything came loose, turning the golden broth a muddy orange. This color intensified to something like baby poo once I'd added the rest of the broth, plus 1 pound of canned pumpkin, 1 tablespoon of honey, a dash of nutmeg and a little salt and pepper. I cooked and stirred the concoction for about 15 minutes.

Once the pot was good and bubbling, I poured in the final ingredient: 1 cup of evaporated milk. I turned down the heat a tad, from medium-low to low, since the recipe specified that you should add this and heat the soup without boiling it. After a couple of minutes, it was ready. Since we were also baking up a beer bread mix, I shut off the stove and we waited for that to finish baking before digging in. Less than one episode of "Weeds" later, we were eating.

Served with a dollop or two of plain yogurt on top, this soup has a pretty complex flavor for something so quick and simple to prepare. It looks like pumpkin pie filling, so you're expecting something sweet. But, no, it's a savory soup, somewhat bland at first but then exploding with creamy curry, mushroom and squash-like flavor. Yeah, that's what unsweetened pumpkin reminds me of, squash. It tastes like autumn. The yogurt (you can also use sour cream) gives it a little tang, too, but it also cools the soup off a bit. Should I have heated the yogurt? Meh. As a bonus, we made the beer bread mix with a can of the world's second-favorite cola, so it was pretty sweet, a perfect complement to the soup.

I haven't given you any new CD suggestions in a while, so my next post will be a long-in-the-making look at some great tunes released over the summer. In the meantime, do yourself a favor and check out some other fine new releases: Wolves in the Throne Room's dismally engrossing Two Hunters, Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings' soul throwback 100 Days, 100 Nights, Limbonic Art's savage punishment Legacy of Evil, Ween's ebullient hodge-podge La Cucaracha and, of course, Helloween's best album in seven years, Gambling with the Devil.