Mushroom soup with smoked reindeer and potato bread

Today comes the first recipe with reindeer, probably the most famous animal in Finland, for those who don't know much about this animal, here comes few facts:

• It is mostly grown in Lapland, in a sort of semi-wild fatten

• It is quite expensive, fresh is around 60-80€ kilo, frozen starting from 40€ kilo but you can find reindeer frozen minced meat for 10-20€ kilo (don't bother to buy it, it is disappointing)

Although today reindeer is not the main part of the dish, it gives a nice touch. So for this soup you can use fresh mushrooms as we did, or dried, if you use the dried normally takes 30-60 min to rehydrate the mushrooms with slightly hot water. 

As a nice side dish for this soup we cooked a potato flat bread, a really useful way to not waste that little bit of boiled or mashed potatoes that always are left behind.

This serving is for 6-8 people.

Ingredients

• 500gr of mushrooms, we used suppis
• onion
• 2tbsp butter
• 3tbsp regular flour
• 3dl vegetables broth
• 2dl cooking cream
• 75g finely chopped cold-smoked reindeer 

 For the potato bread

• 1kg potatoes
• 2 eggs
• 2,5 dl regular flour

Preparation 

Chop the onion in small pieces and saute it with butter for 5-10 min, add the chopped mushroom and let boil the excess water. sprinkle the flour with the help of a strainer and add the vegetable broth.

Let it boil for 10 min and then add the cream, let it cook 5 min and season at your desire.

Here you have a choise, if you don't like to find the little mushroom pieces, a blender and a stainer will make it a smooth soup.

Chop the cold-smoked reindeer and add it before serving.

For the potato bread, if you have already mashed potatoes skip till point 2

1. Peel, cut and boil the potatoes as for making mashed potatoes. Once soft, smash the potatoes and add a bit of milk to have an homogeneous mixture.
2. Add eggs and regular flour and mix it together, work the dough and make balls and flat them, use the barley flour to prevent the dough to stick.
3. Place the flat dough on a baking sheet and cook at 230ºC for 10-15 min until it gets a nice brown colour.

 Enjoy it!