Hungarian Mushroom Soup

I have my mother's recipe for this soup stored in my computer. It says this:

1 box of mushrooms

water equal to = 2/3 to 1/3 mushrooms

parsley

vegeta

put all in pot, cook for 30 min after boil

little bit of soy milk

when it's boiling again, add noodles

make the roux

add it, obviously

add a 2-3 tbsp. of sour cream and cook until dissolved

Up until right now, every time I have made this soup I have needed to do some deciphering. This time I actually called my mother to ask her how many mushrooms a "box of mushrooms" constitutes. So, here is my translated recipe:

Ingredients (to serve six):

• 400g button mushrooms
• 2 tbsp of Vegeta (or your preferred veggie stock)
• half a bunch of parsley, washed, with the ends cut off (keep as much of the stem as you can!)
• a pot of water, filled about 3/4 of the way up to the top
• 4 tbsp soy milk
• 1 heaping tbsp all-purpose white flour
• 1 heaping tbsp Hungarian paprika
• 2-3 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup orzo pasta
• some white vinegar

Slice the mushrooms and put into the pot. Cover with water abut 3/4 of the way up to the top of the pot. Add parsley and Vegeta. Bring to the boil then cook for about 30 minutes.

Add the soy milk and pasta and start on your roux.

This is the most complicated part of the dish. There are a million ways to make roux, but this is the way my Hun relatives have always made it. It is best to cook it quickly on high heat, but it cooks fast and is easy to burn, so it's okay to put it on medium heat if you've not made it before.

The roux:

Pour the vegetable oil into a small, shallow saucepan, so that the oil covers the whole bottom of the pan. Once the oil is hot, add the flour. Stirring constantly, wait until the flour starts to turn a golden brown then add the paprika. Keep stirring! Stir stir stir for about two minutes so it is a deep red/brown and then pour into the soup pot. Scoop up some of the soup water into the saucepan, swirl around to get as much of the roux out as possible, and then pour back into the soup pot.

 

Cook the soup for about ten more minutes until the pasta is cooked then add the sour cream and stir slowly until it has dissolved. Fish out the big pieces of parsley and discard them.

Serve each bowl with another teaspoon of sour cream on top and about 1/2 teaspoon of white vinegar. (PS - there is no picture of this soup because I don't have a pretty enough bowl to make it look attractive enough...it tastes yum, but is kind of ugly...)