Chestnut Mushroom and Tarragon Soup by Kirsten Gilmour from The Mountain Café in Aviemore
Kirsten Gilmour is the owner and head chef at Aviemore’s renowned Mountain Café. This recipe comes from her new book, The Mountain Café Cookbook: a Kiwi in the Cairngorms, which is published by Kitchen Press Publishing on February 14 at £20. In the book, Kirsten draws on her Kiwi roots to turn out contemporary dishes with an antipodean love for fresh and bold flavours.
The book also tells the story of Gilmour’s roundabout journey to Scotland and all the flavours picked up in between. All recipes are marked for special dietary requirements with additional tips for converting more dishes into gluten-free and vegan equivalents. With Gilmour’s warm but straight-talking voice leading them through, readers will confidently be able to recreate dishes that taste just as good as the famous Mountain Café originals.
This is a simple mushroom soup with an aniseed burst from the fresh tarragon. If you don’t have any tarragon, try using basil or your favourite herb. It’s easy to make into a vegan dish too: just replace the double cream with 400ml stock.
Ingredients: Serves 4
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 medium onions, roughly chopped
1 big handful fresh tarragon, stalks removed
4 garlic cloves, chopped
500g chestnut mushrooms, roughly chopped
1200ml vegetable stock (or 2 stock cubes in 1200ml hot water)
400ml double cream
salt
freshly ground black pepper
Method:
- Heat the olive oil in a large soup pot over a medium-high heat.
- Add your onions, tarragon and garlic and sauté until the onions start to soften – don’t let them take on any colour.
- Add the mushrooms and sauté for another five to ten minutes till the mushrooms are starting to soften and have reduced in bulk.
- Pour the stock in, bring to the boil then simmer on a gentle heat till the mushrooms are soft enough to purée (about 30 to 40 minutes).
- Add your cream and blitz the soup really well until you have a super smooth and creamy texture.
- Add a little hot water if the soup is too thick, then season with salt, black pepper and extra tarragon if you feel it needs it.
Serve immediately
In association with Taste Communications.
www.tastecommunications.co.uk
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article