French Connection

It had been a weekend that could be described as being eventful and varied; the cricket team I play in had obtained a hard fought win to move out of the relegation zone, I had been to a chili and chess evening, I'd managed to play my best round of golf all year plus I had the prospect of a trip to watch some live Olympic sport to look forward to.

I realised that the best place to come and wind down between all the excitement was in the kitchen by making some French Onion Soup. The album of choice for preparation of the soup was the laid back ambient, synth-based rock of Neu 75 by Krautrockers Neu! The music on this record was shamelessly ripped off by David Bowie two years later for his, admittedly superb, albums Low and Heroes.

I took five large white onions and fried them on the hob on a medium heat in some olive oil in my Le Cresceut dish. In order to make sure they were the correct texture and soft enough for the soup I covered the dish with a lid and stirred the onions every five minutes or so to make sure they did not stick to the pan. I repeated this process for around thirty minutes until the onions were slightly transparent and a golden brown colour.

When the onions were properly cooked I took the leaves from four sprigs of thyme and mixed them with the onions together with some white pepper and two bay leafs. I cooked the mixture on a low heat for five minutes and then added a pint and a quarter of chicken stock.

If you like your soup to be a bit alcoholic, not mention giving it a much richer flavour, you can add a quarter of a pint of red wine to the mixture. However I chose not to on this occasion as I was also having a dish that contained half a pint of cider.

Not just like eating a bowl of gravy- the soup prior to the addition of the bread

Once the soup had cooked on a low heat for twenty minutes I poured it into individual serving bowls and placed half a slice of buttered bread on top of each bowl with a generous helping of grated Parmesan on each piece of bread. I then put the bowls under the heated grill for around two minutes to toast the bread. I should point out that you need to use bowls that are oven proof when you grill the bread on top of them. Once the bread was grilled the soup was ready.

The use of the thyme, Parmesan covered bread and bay leafs was enough to make this a worthwhile soup and stop it feeling like I was simply eating a large bowl of gravy. However next time I will definitely put some red wine into the mixture to give it a richer taste.  

The freshly toasted bread complete with melted Parmesan and butter  atop it