Wild Rice and Mushroom Soup

Our favorite holiday soup. Looks impressive and is great to share. Adapted from James McNair's Rice Cookbook. Many nice recipes and excellent pictures.

Serves 6 as soup course. 3 as the main dish.

1 Cup wild rice
2 Quarts stock vegetable or chicken
1 Pound misc "wild" mushrooms
2 Tablespoons butter
3 Tablespoons minced shallot or onion
2 Tablespoons lemon juice
2 Cups Heavy whipping cream
1 Tablespoon minced fresh thyme or 1 Teaspoon dried thyme crumbled
Dry sherry or white wine or lemon juice

In a large soup pot, combine stock and rice. Bring to a boil, reduce to low, cover and simmer for 1 1/2 hours. Scoop out about half the rice and set aside. Blend remaining rice, either with an immersion blender or any other blender and about a cup of the stock, until smooth. Put all the rice (blended and unblended) back in the soup pot. The blended rice gives a smooth texture to the soup, the remaining rice gives some body to the soup. Return to a simmer.

Pull off woody stems from mushrooms. Finely chop mushrooms, a quick pulse in a food processor make this quick. A longer pulse with the woody stems makes them usable.

In a skillet melt the butter and saute the shallot or onion over medium heat till lightly browned, about 3 minutes. Add mushrooms and lemon juice. Saute till the mushrooms are soft and most of the liquid is gone, about 5 minutes. The mushroom mixture will absorb the butter and lemon juice fairly quickly, you will need to wait a minute or two for it to soften up enough to give up the liquid that you want to cook off. If in doubt just stir occasionally for the full 5 minutes.

Add the shallot mushroom mixture to the soup pot and add the cream and thyme. Stir while bringing to a boil. Reduce to a simmer uncovered until thick about 15 minutes. Season with salt, pepper and sherry or wine.