wild mushroom miso

Last week while my dad was visiting for the holidays, I finally made it to the Dekalb Farmers Market and now I’m feeling silly that this is our second year living in Georgia and we’d never visited this amazing place before. I could rave on and on about the indoor market’s selection of organic produce, fair trade coffee, organic bulk grains, spices, dried foods, and nuts, or you can read all about it on their website here.

Although my dad and I intended to mostly browse the isles, we left the market with our canvas bags overflowing. The bulk items were especially hard to pass up, since everything was so much less expensive than the bulk selection at our local health food store or co-op. Our jaws dropped when we found a mix of dried wild mushrooms, about 3 cups worth, for less than $3. We’ve used them sparingly in pasta and in a wild mushroom and pecan pesto, which we made off the cuff and it was fabulous. I’ll be sure to post it once I get the ingredient measurements down.

Today, however, we have been lying around nursing the colds that kept us home last night and nothing sounded better than hot, brothy soup. The following recipe for Wild Mushroom Miso is so easy, you’ll probably be able to manage pulling your-self out of bed to make it on your next sick day, or, you can whip it up any old night when your head doesn’t feel like a balloon and you’ll enjoy it even more. The most important part of the recipe is the broth created from soaking the mushrooms in water to re-hydrate them, so remember not to throw it out when you drain the mushrooms. The broth is just as flavorful and savory as the mushrooms themselves.
Wild Mushroom Miso

¾ cup Dried Wild Mushrooms
3 cups Water
1 Vegetable Bouillon cube
1 – 1 ½ Tbsp Organic White Miso*
¼ carton Organic Firm Silken Tofu, cubed*

Boil 1 cup of water.
Pour boiling water over dried mushrooms in a bowl, using a second bowl inside to weigh down the mushrooms and keep them submerged.
Soak mushrooms for 10 minutes, then remove them from the water.
Chop hydrated mushrooms into smaller pieces, if necessary.
Add the water used to soak the mushrooms with 2 additional cups of water and the vegetable bouillon cube to a soup pot.
Bring broth to a boil.
Add mushrooms and tofu and reduce heat to low.
Transfer one ladle of broth to a bowl and stir in miso until dissolved.
Return broth to soup pot.
Simmer for an additional 5 minutes, until tofu is heated through and soup is steaming hot.

This recipe will make enough for 4 small bowls of soup, but my husband and I just ate all of it between the two of us. We served it with hot white tea, which was a perfect pair.

*Several very toxic pesticides are used to grow conventional soybeans, so be sure to use organic tofu and miso.