Garlic soup with porcini mushrooms

Miriam, author of El Invitado de Invierno, brings us a recipe worth practicing from the very first cold day: this version of garlic soup will warm you up while you enjoy all of its characteristic flavor. Enjoy!

There's nothing more appealing when it's chilly than a good soup, so let's make this garlic soup and boletus.

With this succulent dish we put a twist on the very traditional and somewhat rustic garlic soup. To do this we remove the cured meat and leave only its memory thanks to sweet paprika. At the last moment we add some tasty chunks of boletus and we get a lighter soup than the original, with milder, less aggressive flavors—perhaps more to modern tastes.

De Buyer copper saucepan and Bérard olivewood cutting board

Ingredients (for 2 people)

4 garlic cloves

25gr of extra virgin olive oil

½ tsp. of sweet paprika

1 pinch of cumin (optional)

75 g of stale bread (better with a tight crumb, like candeal)

500ml of water or beef stock

salt to taste

pieces of boletus to each person's taste

Preparation

This is a breeze and done in no time. Peel the garlic and slice it into not-too-thin pieces.

Cut the stale bread into thin slices that can later absorb the sofrito oil. If the bread is fresh, let the slices dry by cutting them a few hours before preparing the soup. Dried bread absorbs much more liquid than day-old bread.

Put the oil in a frying pan or in a saucepan and heat gently. Add the garlic slices and sauté them just until they begin to brown, no more.

Then add the paprika and stir a few times; it should never be fried for more than a minute because it can turn bitter if it burns.

Immediately add the bread slices and stir them with a wooden spoon so they soak up the paprika-flavored oil. Then add the water/stock, season with salt, cover and simmer slowly until the bread puffs up, at least 8–10 minutes, has absorbed a good amount of stock and becomes creamy; this is one of the secrets of garlic soup: the bread integrates into the soup.

Taste and adjust seasoning if necessary. Serve immediately in earthenware bowls, which retain heat better, and at the same time add a few chunks of boletus on top of each serving.

Boletus or Wild Mushrooms in olive oil

We enjoy the hot soup with a good red wine. Nirvana. No one can call you common for serving a dignified garlic soup topped with some delicious boletus, fresh or preserved in oil, which are equally excellent. And if we serve the garlic soup as a shooter, in small appetizer portions, none of your in-laws will be able to criticize you. At most they'll die of envy at your level of refinement. There.

NOTE: I recommend serving the soups in individual soup tureens, like the ones you can see here.