Mushroom & Tarragon Soup with Spinach

Firstly, adding a cube of frozen spinach into anything savoury you are stirring on the stove is an underrated act of kindness. Spinach is one of those superfoods, and unless you’re munching it raw in a salad or loading it with cream, (yes, you know it is true), it is rather tasteless. Not to mention it’s ability to suck up water and hold on to it like a determined dog with anything you’re trying to wrestle out of its mouth. Spinach in a soup adds more of those yummy essential vitamins and minerals everyone raves about, in a natural digestible form.

Food is simple and packed with vitamins when you eat it well.

So this roasted mushroom soup has been on my radar for ages, years even, and I am not kidding. I have dreamed of the days when I could make a delicious mushroom soup. The reason why it’s taken me so long is that when I cook soup I tend to batch cook, and I just don’t have it me to eat lashing of it, days after day, like most other soups I make.

However, the day arrived last week when I happened to be passing some delicious looking cartons of mushrooms, they were the perfect sizes and I grabbed myself a couple. Happy days. Then I sauntered over to the herb aisle and because I have wonderful memories of N’debele, a South African deli that used to be in Edinburgh, and served the most wonderful Chicken and Tarragon sandwiches, I grabbed tarragon.

I have to digress here for a moment, the sandwich was good. So good in fact it was the exact meal I desired after the birth of my son, and weekly during my pregnancy. I was reminded of N’debele more recently when a colleague and I were chatting about the actor Sam Heugan, from Outlander, who she knew when he used to hang out in ‘this cafe in home street’. “N’debele!” we both cried. I could have cried for real, that was one tasty sandwich. For context, my son is 22, proving that really good food can make memories that last a lifetime.

Getting back to mushrooms and soup. I do think there is a more robust flavour when you roast vegetables prior to their souping. (Tomatoes especially!)

Mushroom & Tarragon Soup Recipe

2 x cartons of button or closed cap mushrooms.

2 x tbsp of chopped carrots, celery and onions

1 x litre of veg or chicken stock

1 x small bunch of tarragon

1 salt & pepper

1 x tbsp olive oil

1 x small single cream

2 x frozen spinach cubes

Wipe dirt from mushrooms and lay flat on a roasting tin, drizzle with olive oil, and garlic granules, salt and pepper and then lay the tarragon over the top. Pretty!

Roast for 30 mins, then add with juices to a pot of already softened chopped carrots, onion and celery. Add the stock and then let cook for 15 - 20 mins, Blend and serve with a twirl of cream, a drizzle of oil, and some crusty bread if you so desire.