Blog

Vegan Cream of Mushroom Soup with Cashew Cream

Makes about 6 cups

Print this Recipe!

For the Soup:

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 medium yellow onion, chopped

3 garlic cloves, minced

1 pound cremini mushrooms, cleaned and sliced

1 tablespoons soy sauce (I used Bragg’s Amino Acids)

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce (vegan please)

about 1 teaspoon coarse ground black pepper

3 cups vegetable broth

salt to taste

For the Cashew Cream:

1/2 cup raw cashews

1/2 cup water

*Substitute Cashew Cream with 3/4 cup half and half or 8 ounces of silken tofu

In a large pot, heat olive oil over medium heat.  Add onions to hot oil and saute until translucent and slightly browned, about 5 minutes.  Add garlic, stir, and cook for 1 minute more.  Add the mushrooms, soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce and cook until mushrooms are cooked and broken down, about 5 minutes.  Stir occasionally.  Add cracked pepper and  vegetable stock and cook at a simmer until mushrooms are completely soft.  This took me about 10 to 15 minutes.

While the soup simmers, prepare the cashew cream.  In a blender, combine raw cashews and water.  Blend on high until smooth.  Pour into a measuring cup and set aside.  Don’t worry about washing the blender… we’re going to use it to blend the soup.

When mushrooms are cooked through, add about one third of the soup to the blender.  Hot soup rises high in the blender so definitely be careful how high you fill the blender.  Blend soup on low, increasing the speed to high, until no large mushroom chunks remain.  Pour blended soup into a clean pot or large bowl.  Blend the remaining soup in batches.  *If using silken tofu instead of cashew cream.  Blend the silken tofu in with the mushrooms and broth.

Add the cashew cream to the blended soup and stir to incorporate.

Place a fine mesh strainer over the pot that you cooked the soup in.  In batches, pour the blended soup into the fine mesh strainer and work the soup through the strainer with a rubber spatula.  Don’t use a wooden spoon… you could get splinters in your soup… seriously.  Heat and serve the strained soup.  Or place in a freezer safe container for a few weeks down the road.

Not So Vegan Herb Bread

1 fresh baguette

3 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

3 tablespoons coarsely chopped parsley

1 clove garlic

1 tablespoon olive oil

3 tablespoons fresh grated Parmesan cheese

salt and pepper to taste.

Place a rack in the upper third of the oven and preheat to 350 degrees F.

On a clean cutting board, use a fork to mash together softened butter, garlic, and chopped parsley.  Once incorporated, drizzle the olive oil over the butter mixture and work in the olive oil.  Add the Parmesan cheese, salt and pepper and incorporate with the fork.

Slice baguette into thick slices, not slicing all the way through the loaf, but keeping the slices connected.  Spread parsley butter in between bread slices.  Wrap baguette in foil and bake for 10 minutes, or until butter is melted and fragrant.

Remove from the oven and serve immediately.

I was thinking of having “If you change the ingredients in a recipe, results will vary” tattooed on my forehead, but there wasn’t enough room. (Although if my hairline keeps receding at this rapid pace, it may happen sooner than you think.) When I used to teach classes, folks were always wanting to tinker with recipes, especially ice cream, replacing the cream with what-have-you. Or to replace the sugar with something else. I’m not sure why, because I spend an inordinate amount of my life developing and testing recipes to get them just right.

Unless I’ve personally tested it, it’s pretty hard to give my nod of approval and tell what will and what won’t work in recipes, especially when it comes to swapping out sweeteners and dairy products since their counterparts behave quite differently than one might think. Ice cream, of course, depends on cream to give it that particular texture and flavor. But I do like and use non-dairy alternatives at home on occasion and saw no reason why I couldn’t churn up a batch of ice cream without a drop of dairy.

I started with soy milk, thinking that it had the richest flavor of them all and was the most readily available. But my first batch of ice cream had a murky taste, perhaps because I used agave nectar as well with it. It wasn’t bad, but I wasn’t digging my spoon back in to the container or licking the canister clean when I pulled out the ice cream.

I then considered rice milk, which has a less-pronounced flavor, although it’s slightly less-rich than soy milk. I invited over Theresa Murphy, who teaches vegetarian cooking classes in Paris to come by for a taste and she said the best rice milk in France is an Italian brand, Isola. So I dashed right over to biocoop, a chain of natural food stores in France, and grabbed a liter.

Because rice milk is light, and macerating the strawberries for an hour before blending them up augments their flavor, you’ll find this strawberry ice cream will have a very intense color and the flavor of the strawberries will really come through. One trick I’ll pass along is that if you’re strawberries aren’t perfectly ripe, you can add a tablespoon of crème de cassis. I usually keep a bottle on hand just for that purpose, although I didn’t need to use any here because it’s the middle of strawberry season and the strawberries were pretty terrific.

I also get plenty of questions about alternative sweeteners, and while I like agave nectar, I found that when used as the primary sweetener in this ice cream, the flavor overpowers the strawberries. So I stuck with granulated cane sugar. (You can use refined or light unrefined.) I add a few spoonfuls of honey which add a nice background sweetness and helps keep the frozen ice cream scoopable. I realize that I’m probably stepping on a minefield with that one since there is a debate in the vegan community whether or not honey is vegan. If you don’t eat honey, replace it with an equal amount of another liquid sweetener or sugar.

Adding a bit of kirsch or another liquor keeps the ice cream softer once churned. Traditional ice cream has fat to keep it smooth. But if you don’t plan to eat this ice cream shortly after churning, you might want to take it out of the freezer to let it soften until it’s scoopable. The kirsch is optional and you can check out other options at Tips for Making Homemade Ice Cream Softer.

Folks often ask why chunks of fruit freeze too hard in ice creams. It’s because fruit is mostly water (most fruit is at least 80% water, and strawberries are nearly 91% water ) and we all know what happens when water freezes. So unless you plan to eat the ice cream soon after churning, they’re going to freeze pretty solidly. For this ice cream, I puree it just to the point that it’s liquidy, but there are still slight bits of strawberries. You can also puree it until completely smooth and strain out the seeds, if that’s your preference. (See? I do offer some choices.)

Good non-dairy accompaniments to a scoop of this strawberry ice cream are a nice dousing with chocolate sauce, alongside a dish of warm nectarine and cherry compote or red wine-poached rhubarb.

Or serve pieces of candied ginger alongside, spoon crystals of strawberry granita alongside and serve them together in a large goblet, or serve a scoop in a glass with a splash of peach leaf wine.

Related Posts and Recipes

Buying an Ice Cream Machine

Making Ice Cream Without a Machine

Strawberry Frozen Yogurt

Tips for Vegetarian Dining in Paris

Vegetarian Restaurants in Paris

French Sugars

The Vegan Scoop (Amazon)

What is Gelato?

Rhubarb-Berry Jam

Ingredients for American Baking in Paris

Agave-Sweetened Chocolate Ice Cream

Tips for Making Homemade Ice Cream Softer