Thai Yellow Curry Soup with Blewits

The typical mushroom found in Thai food is commonly called the paddy straw mushroom, Volvariella volvacea. Although blewits have neither the taste nor texture of paddy straw mushrooms, something about their musty fruity flavor seems to work with strong sour flavors like those found in this recipe. To be honest, as I'm not particularly fond of blewits, I often look for ways to hide the aspects of their flavor that I don't like, and this recipe seems to do a pretty good job of that. Often I cheat and use ready-made canned spice mixtures that come imported from Thailand, but here I tried to recreate the flavors with readily available raw ingredients:

Grind together the following to make 4 oz. yellow curry paste:

And, for the soup:

If mushrooms are dry, soak for 1 hour. Do not discard the liquid - keep it to combine with the soup. Sautée the fresh or rehydrated mushrooms for 5 minutes in a barely oiled pan (add a bit of extra liquid if needed when sautéeing the rehydrated ones.) Heat the water in a large soup pot and add the spice mixture, also adding the liquid culled from rehydrating the dried blewits. Bring to a boil, then add the mushrooms and asparagus. Cook for about 5-10 minutes, until the asparagus is barely cooked. Serve immediately.