Bread Soup With Wild Mushrooms

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Molly O'Neill is our Food Editor. She is the former food columnist for The New York Times Magazine. O'Neill is the author of three cookbooks, including the best-selling New York Cookbook (Workman Publishing, 1992), A Well Seasoned Appetite (Penguin, 1997), and The Pleasure of Your Company (Viking, 1997). She was the host of the PBS series Great Food, and edited the critically acclaimed anthology American Food Writing (Library of America, 2007). Her latest work, Mostly True: A Memoir of Family, Food, and Baseball (Scribner, 2006), recounts her childhood of growing up in a Major-League baseball family.

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by Molly O'Neill

Adapted from Flavors of Tuscany by Nancy Harmon Jenkins (Broadway, 1998).

Bread soups are a Tuscan tradition, one that Nancy Harmon Jenkins, the author of four cookbooks and at home in both Tuscany and Maine, can’t wait to share with her little grandson. This recipe comes from the mountains behind Cortona in the eastern region of Tuscany. With a hearty salad and peasant-style bread with herbed olive oil for dipping, this rustic dish becomes a fine winter meal.

1 1/4 pounds wild mushrooms, cut into large chunks, or 1/2 pound fresh shiitake mushrooms and one 1/2-ounce package dried porcini mushrooms soaked in boiling water for 30 minutes
1/4 cup plus 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
3 cloves garlic
3 sprigs wild mint (nepitella, similar to pennyroyal), or 5 fresh sage leaves
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 cup drained, coarsely chopped canned plum tomatoes
6 (1-inch-thick) slices firm country-style bread, toasted on each side
6 large eggs
1/2 cup grated aged Pecorino or Parmigiano-Reggiano, plus additional for serving

1. Combine the fresh mushroom chunks and 1/4 cup of the olive oil in a stock pot. Place over medium heat and cook, stirring, until the mushrooms have absorbed the oil and released it again. Add 2 cloves of the garlic, the mint or sage, salt, and lots of pepper and cook, stirring, until the ingredients are well blended, about 10 minutes.

2. Add the tomatoes, then stir in 4 cups of hot water. (If using soaked dried mushrooms, add them at this point along with 1/4 cup of their soaking liquid.) Cover the pan and cook for about 15 minutes. Taste and season to taste with more salt and pepper, and add more of the mushroom soaking liquid if you like.

3. Meanwhile, slice the remaining garlic clove in half and rub each slice of toasted bread with garlic. Drizzle a little of the remaining olive oil over each slice. Place one slice in the bottom of each soup bowl.

4. Beat the eggs with the cheese in the bottom of a heated soup tureen or similar serving dish. Beat a ladleful of hot soup into the egg mixture. Keep beating in ladlefuls until the mixture is very hot. When the egg mixture is well heated, pour the remaining boiling soup over it and stir well. Serve immediately, ladling the soup over the toasted bread. Pass more grated cheese to garnish.

Makes 6 servings.