Antoine's Cream of Mushroom Soup

This is a refined cream of mushroom soup that earns its place at a dinner party, not a casserole base. Flavor is built in stages: butter-browned mushrooms deglazed with sherry, then chicken stock simmered down by half. A separate pan reduces another three-quarter cup of sherry by three-quarters, concentrating it into a punchy syrup that goes back into the soup at the end.

That double-sherry move is the signature here. Cooking off the alcohol while keeping the wine’s nutty, oxidized complexity gives the bowl a deeper backbone than your standard mushroom cream. The soup gets finished with heavy cream, ladled over chicken-hazelnut quenelles, and topped with chopped toasted hazelnuts for crunch and a bittersweet contrast.

Chef Tips

• Don’t crowd the pan when sauteing the mushrooms. Crowded mushrooms steam instead of brown and you lose all that deep flavor.
• Use a dry sherry like fino or amontillado, not a sweet cream sherry. Cooking sherry from the supermarket works in a pinch but real sherry tastes cleaner.
• Toast the hazelnuts only until the skins loosen, not until they’re deeply browned. Over-toasted hazelnuts go bitter fast.
• Hold off on salt until the very end. Both the stock and reduced sherry concentrate as they cook.

Variations

• Use a mix of cremini, shiitake, and oyster mushrooms instead of plain button for a wilder, woodsier flavor.
• Skip the quenelles and serve as a straight bisque for an easier weeknight version.
• Substitute Madeira for the sherry for a slightly sweeter, fruitier finish.