Wild mushroom soup with crispy chorizo

Somehow, I managed to spend 8 months in Italy without cooking wild mushrooms once.  Actually, up until this week I had never cooked wild mushrooms at all.  Their mystique has been building steadily since I arrived in Spain.  Bountiful mushroom displays in Barcelona, Madrid and Valencia.  Mushroom cooking demonstrations at Murcia's gastronomic festival last month.  Stories related to me about Spaniards flocking to the forests each fall to collect their own.

Then on Tuesday I went to El Palmar's open market and came across a stand with a whole section devoted to them.  In a stall piled high with all sorts of fruits and vegetables, this table was furnished with a bed of parsley and set aside for wild mushrooms alone, all laid out carefully in a single layer.  I already had a hyped up mushroom ideal in mind, and as the vendor started trailing his fingers over the selection, landing on three for my bag (even stopping to rethink his choice on the second), I became even more solidly convinced that the only possible result on my first attempt would involve the adjectives meaty, earthy and intense. I was wrong.

Made this..

With that

Which was originally supposed to be this

Ingredients:
Extra virgin olive oil
1/4 of an onion, diced
A couple cloves of garlic, thinly sliced
1/3-1/2 of 1 bouillon cube
Water
3 to 4 medium size wild mushrooms, cleaned and sliced
1 slice of chorizo, about a quarter of an inch thick
1 cup cooked rice
Parsley

Reader's Digest version:
-Heat up the oil in a small pot and add the onion, cooking until translucent
-Clear away a bit of room in the middle of the pot and add the garlic
-Stir for about 30 seconds or until you can smell the garlic, then incorporate with the onions
-Crumble up the bouillon cube and sprinkle it over the onion and garlic, then cook until the aromatics start to color, stirring frequently
-Add in the mushrooms and cook for about 10 minutes, stirring frequently
-Add a little water to pick up the fond from the bottom of the pan, then stir in half the rice
-Season to taste with more of the bouillon cube, then add in water to cover the ingredients and bring to a boil
-Transfer the soup to a regular blender or use an immersion blender to bring everything together until it's as creamy as possible
-If the soup is at all gritty, pour it into a fine mesh strainer and use the back of a spoon to stir and press the soup through the strainer into a bowl
-Rinse and dry the pot and add in the chopped chorizo
-Cook until the chorizo is crispy and some of that great red grease coats the bottom of the pot
-Set the chorizo aside and pour in the soup
-Stir in the rest of the rice and bring to a simmer
-Pour into bowls and top with the fresh parsley and crispy chorizo

Extended version:
Plan-Use up the rest of a potato and roasted garlic I had on hand along with some onion for crispy hashbrowns, sautee the mushrooms, season and toss with parsley then finish it all off with an over-easy egg.

But-With much anticipation, I tasted the mushrooms, and with much dismay, the first two words that came to mind were sponge-like and gritty.  Clearly, my mushroom naïveté had led to inadequate prep and faulty technique.

So-I decided to call in the immersion blender.  My roommate had given me her leftover rice and seeing it in the fridge triggered a memory of some Julia Child recipes that used rice as an alternative to dairy in cream soups.  I sauteed some aromatics with a bit of bouillon cube, then added in the mushrooms and rice and blended everything together.  After a run through a fine mesh strainer the grit was gone, and crisping up some chorizo in the pot before adding the soup back in gave it a bit more dimension.  From there I added in the rest of the rice and topped it off with fresh parsley and the spicy sausage.