Clear Beef & Mushroom Broth

I get so sick of cream of mushroom soup.

I mean really, really, sick of it. You add cream to anything and it tastes good.

It is, however, boring. This soup uses a base stock that I make in bulk and freeze. On defrosting you can throw in game (pigeon breast is good), vegetables (like described below) or a slab of strongly flavoured fish (monkfish and tuna work), and serve.

The broth isn't actually clear, it gets murky quite quickly, so you could make a deep bowl and hide hideous things at the bottom. I normally put the tentacles of a quid down their to imply the unseen horrors that lurk in the depths of our oceans, and same the bodies for my attempts at Spanish cooking.

Ingredients

1 litre of perfect but frozen beef broth straight from the supply you keep in the freezer
I small red onion, freshly plucked from your vegetable garden, finely sliced
10 large mushroom, without stalks, sliced, retrieved from your cellar, sliced.
I large entrecote (enough for two)

1. Heat up the broth untill boiling merrily as if having a party in the pot with itself.

2. Heat the griddle to a hight temperature, and grill the entrecote for 2 minutes each side.

3. Throw in the the mushroom in to the broth

4. Immediately slice the beef on the diagonal and pile in the soup dishes in a kind of wigwam.

5. Around the edges place the thin onion slices.

6. Ladle the broth and the mushrooms over the meat and onions. The heat from the broth will warm the meat, and cook the onions.

7. Serve at once.

The stock is the key:

1 litre of beef stock (home made...or go on then, use stock cubes)
1 tsp of sesme oil
1 splashes of tabasco sauce (or more)
1 packets of miso soup concentrate
1 tbsp of dry sherry
1 small onion, sliced
3 cloves of garlic, crushed

Remember to strain the stock before freezing, or using, it.