I made about a quart and a half of cream of mushroom soup, using some dried mushrooms I bought at an Asian market a couple of months ago. (I buy stuff because it looks interesting, then don't know what to do with it) The mushroom-looking ones I think were shitakes. The others were "black fungus", a.k.a. "tree ears". I used about equal parts of each. I soaked them in hot water for an hour, then chopped them up and sautéed them in butter with the shallots. I used the soaking water for broth.
Turns out, the tree ears never really get soft (they do soften to a point but then stay kind of rubbery no matter how long you cook them) and have no flavor, they absorb whatever flavors are in the broth and add texture.
The soup was still good from the shitakes, shallots, and a small beef bouillon cube. And it has a lot of fiber.
I'll make this again soon using all shitakes (I bought a *big* package of them) and try to find some other use for the ears.