Recipe - Cream Of Salsify And Mushroom Soup

450 g Salsify ( 1 lb)
2 Onions, chopped
3 tablespoon Sunflower oil
275 g Mushrooms (9 2/3 oz),
cleaned and roughly
chopped
1 tablespoon Olive oil
1 l Water (2 1/8 pints)
25 g Butter (1 oz)
25 g Flour (1 oz)
1 One half dl Milk (One fourth pint)
Sea salt
Black pepper, freshly ground

Scrub the salsify in plenty of water, discard the ends of the roots and cut
into 1 cm (One half in) lengths. Soften the onions with the salsify in the
sunflower oil for 10 ... 15 minutes in a heavy, covered pan. Stir
occasionally to prevent sticking, as salsify is dry. Meanwhile stew the
mushrooms in the olive oil until they have given off their liquid, reserve
the liquid and add the mushrooms to the salsify and onions. Cover with the
water and bring to the boil; simmer for 20 minutes. In a heavy pan, melt
the butter, stir in the flour and gradually add first the mushroomsliquid,
then the milk. When you have a thick sauce, slowly stir in the liquid from
the soup, add the vegetables and liquidize. Season with salt and pepper to
taste. (Salsify is a long, thin, darkly earthcoloured root, can be found
in greengrocers's shops in February, also available as preserved ; when
scrubbed, it is revealed to be white whithout an obvious outer skin. Also
known as "vegetable oysters" ~ some curiously salt, fishy flavour or as
"poor people's asparagus")

From Gemini's MASSIVE MealMaster collection at www.synapse.com/~gemini