CATEGORY: WINDING DOWN

I was taken out to dinner at a really good restaurant.  One of the delectable things on the menu was Chicken Mushroom Basil soup.  I did not forget how good it was.  One day when I was sautéing chicken bits in lemon juice, a trick I had learned from Jari, I thought that if I just added mushrooms, basil and a liquid I would maybe have this soup.  Another thing I had learned about soup once, when I had a soup party for which I had made five kinds of soup, was that the basic ingredients of gourmet cream soups were cream and chicken broth.  So the “liquid” I would add would be cream and chicken broth.  The resulting soup was just like that I had in the restaurant.  Here is the recipe:

CHICKEN MUSHROOM BASIL SOUP

In a large soup kettle, sauté in 6T of lemon juice:
1 skinned and boned chicken breast cut in small pieces
½ lb. mushrooms sliced

Add:
6 cups of half and half
1 T of BETTER THAN BULLION chicken base
1 T dried basil
white pepper to taste

NO SALT: The chicken base is salty enough.  If the soup is too salty, add more half and half. If it is too bland, add more chicken base and/or white pepper.