Cream of mushroom soup, flavored with garam masala

Last week, I talked about the simplicity of the Bengali garam masala; this week's post is a continuation of the same thread. This week, I present a cream of mushroom soup flavored with garam masala rather than with garlic and onion.

This is a strictly vegetarian version (unless you consider fungus as non-vegetarian; I think biologically fungus is a plant) of the cream of mushroom soup, which I became intimately familiar with when I lived in the United States, a decade ago. During those shoestring-budget days (as a graduate student), I often fell back upon a can of Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup (and bread) for dinner.

Here is a low-fat recipe (without cream, thickened with flour instead) for the soup with a Bengali touch:

Ingredients
1 lb. mushroom (almost any kind would do; I used white button)
2 oz. (or four tablespoons) butter, preferably unsalted
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 litre (or 4 cups) milk
1 teaspoon Bengali garam masala (whole, dry-roasted, and ground)
Salt and pepper to taste

Method

1. Wipe the mushrooms with a damp cloth or paper towel, trim the bases of stems, and chop the mushrooms.
2. Heat butter in pan and suate the mushrooms for a 2-3 minutes, until just softened.
3. Add milk and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring once in a while.
4. Stir in flour into a cup of cold water and add to the soup.
5. Simmer for 5 more minutes and season with salt, pepper, and the garam masala.
6. Serve hot with bread.

Serves 4-5