French Onion Soup

OK guys - pick up your skirts, your shorts or your kilts, put your clogs on and do the happy dance. Today is my 200th post - can you believe it? I started this venture on April 2, 2009 - hey I could have started the day before that but I'm no fool. Now here it is, October 13 and I'm already hitting number 200 and haven't run out of ideas, recipes, rants or other things to say. I've gained a legion of dedicated followers, a treasured new friend (Mags take a bow), a spanky new 10 pounds and I'm partially responsible for my husband's increased cholesterol numbers (hey - he eats the stuff). But you know what? I'm far from done yet, so stay tuned for a lot more from JBug's Kitchen.

Speaking of that extra 10 pounds - I figured I'd introduce a meat free dinner last night just so we have a slight break from so much excess. I wracked my brains to come up with something lighter, but all I could think of was French Onion Soup. Hey, I didn't say it was gonna' be a fat farm meal, I just said LIGHTER.

Now there's a lot of versions of French Onion Soup out there - some have bacon, some sherry, some white wine, some red wine. Some use red onions, others sweet or yellow onions, or all three. Some ask for chicken stock, some beef broth and others a combination. Then there's the cheese - swiss, mozzarella, gruyere, parmesan - in fact there's as many versions as Carter's have little liver pills...whoa, that just dated me didn't it? That's not from me - my Mother used to say it. Honest.

 
I've made a lot of different recipes for French Onion Soup, but the one I keep coming back to is adapted from Piret's Cookbook by George and Piret Munger. I was gifted with this book way back in 1988 and not only do I treasure my memories of the giver, there's not one thing I've made from it that hasn't been stellar. In fact, I just googled and you can still buy the book through Amazon for under $5.00. That's highway robbery - for heaven's sake buy the darn thing if you can. It's fabulous and worth 10 times that....and no, they're not paying me to say that. Download French Onion Soup

Of course the key to good French Onion Soup is caramelizing the onions and that little task took over an hour in my favorite oval cast iron pot. Take your time with it and let them do their thing. It is well worth it both in terms of flavor and color of the end product. As well, this soup is thickened with a little roux, which gives it a lot of richness and body. It also makes it a lot easier to eat. We used the heavy duty propane torch to melt the swiss cheese on top of our bowls, but you can certainly put them under the broiler to achieve the same effect. It's just that I didn't want to turn the oven on again, cause it was already scorchin' in the kitchen.

Oh one more thing - you know that pear kuchen I made last week that we liked so much? Well I made a peach one last night. Hey, I didn't want the big guy to leave the table hungry and I found these absolutely incredible fresh peaches at Sprouts that I couldn't pass up. I gotta' tell you - it's a toss up which kuchen is the best kuchen. Oh, of course I added vanilla to the custard as well as some ginger to the crust. If you make something more than once does it become your recipe? Let me know what you think about that. Otherwise once again, here's the link to the site. http://julesfood.blogspot.com/2009/09/grandmas-pear-kuchen.html 

Comments

[Mags]

First of all, congratulations on your 200th post! That's a lot of cooking, photographing, eating and typing. You should be proud.

Regarding the 10 pounds, I feel for ya. I've gained that since I started the bread baker's apprentice challenge (right about the same time you started blogging, in fact.) What was I thinking? Like I was going to bake a loaf of bread every week for 40 weeks and not gain weight?

The onion soup looks so wonderful. That's one of our favorite soups but all that time caramelizing the onions keeps me from making it too often.

I read somewhere that if you change 3 things in a recipe you can call it your own. Peaches, vanilla and ginger... That's three and I officially declare that recipe your own!!

Thanks for being a good friend June. I'm so glad we found each other's blogs and got to know one another. I'm looking forward to your next 200 posts!

[June]

Aww thanks Mags. Ya brought tears to me eyes, ya did. Now I'm heading to the fridge for another piece of MY recipe for peach kuchen! LOL