Mushroom Soup

Last night, amidst watching the Top Chef marathon before the finale, (Woot Stephanie!), I had a major craving for a super earthy soup and happened to have a giant bag of shitake mushrooms in my fridge. See, at Chinese stores, they don't try to make you think shitake are delicacies and therefore need to be like $6.99/lb. They just throw a bunch in a bag and put on a sticker that says $2.00.

Since I really just wanted the deep earthy flavor of mushrooms, I used as few ingredients as possible: 3 shallots, shitakes, a teeny douse of heavy cream, salt and white pepper. I add salt and cream after pureeing it to control the flavor better.

For the cornbread, I used a mix but I shaved 2 corn cobs and put the fresh kernels in the mix with some paprika and coriander.

For the herbed butter ... yes, I know it kind of looks really weird ... but it was my first attempt and all I had was parsley. Not even Italian parsley -- just parsley. When I placed the butter on the hot cornbread I thought it would melt all over so I could take a picture but it didn't quite happen like that. Next time.