Onion soup with toasty, melty cheese and garlic croutons, comfort food doesn’t get much better than this!
- 2 ponds yellow onions thinly sliced
- 4 tablespoons butter
- 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
- 3 tablespoons flour
- 2 litres beef broth (can be made by dissolving 2 Knorr beef stock cubes)
- 1 1/2 cup dry sherry or 3 cups dry white wine
- 1/2 cup Cognac, brandy or port wine
- Salt and fresh ground pepper to taste
- one loaf of French bread sliced
- 3/4 cup olive oil
- 3 cloves chopped garlic
- 2 cups combination of grated Gruyere (or some other Swiss cheese) and Parmesan cheese
In a large saucepan heat the butter and oil and add the onions. Cover and sweat the onions on low heat for about 15 minutes or until translucent, stirring occasionally. Sweating the onions allows you to cook them longer without burning or browning them too much. Remove the lid, season with salt and pepper and increase the heat slightly to medium-low. Cook the onions for another 30 minutes until they are nice and golden coloured. Add the flour and cook for another 5 minutes stirring often. Stir in the sherry or white wine giving it a minute or so to cook off some of the alcohol and then add the hot broth. Simmer gently for 30 to 40 minutes. Adjust the seasoning if needed with salt and pepper and add the brandy or port.
For the garlic croutons, add the chopped garlic to the olive oil. Arrange the bread slices on a baking tray and place in a 350 F oven. Bake for 10-15 minutes, remove from the oven and brush both sides with the oil and dot with the chopped garlic. Return to the oven to brown for another 5-10 minutes.
Ladle the soup into heated bowls and float the croutons on top. Cover with the grated cheese and grill under the broiler for a few minutes until the cheese is toasty on top.
Makes 6 to 8 servings.
The other week I rigged up a photography studio at home for shooting images for this site. I only spend a few quid too. It consists of:
- a desk lamp with a translucent plastic sack over it to defuse the light
- large sheets of coloured card from a stationary store
- white pieces of cardboard to use as light reflectors
- a bit of folded cardboard that stands a little over 1 foot or so tall to hold up the card
- a few clothes pins for clipping the card and reflector on to the cardboard support
The light is not perfect so a tripod is needed and the card is too small for shooting anything large, but for an hours work, a few scraps and less than £40 spent it’s not too bad.
The photo above is fillet of wild caught sockeye salmon, left raw to show off the wonderfully red flesh. This salmon is best when planked which means to grill it on a cedar plank. Fantastic!
Choucroute is a big time winter favourite in my house. This may not be the most appetising photo, but believe me, it looks and smells just fantastic when you bring it to the table.
Choucroute, a dish from the Alsace, is French for dressed sauerkraut and is simply sauerkraut cooked with pork, usually sausages and cheap salted cuts like ham hock and back bacon. My recipe changes slightly each time I make it depending on what I have on hand, this year it was a joint of belly pork and some bratwurst from the freezer. I have adapted this from one of my favourite books, The Taste of France.
- 2 pounds (1 kg) sauerkraut
- 1-2 pound thick cut streaky or back bacon and/or assorted salted cuts of pork
- 4 or 5 bratwurst (cervelas, Frankfurt, Strasbourg, or Montbéliard sausages could also be used but may be harder to find)
- 3-4 medium sized potatoes peeled and quartered
- 1 onion sliced
- 3 cloves chopped garlic
- 3/4 cup white wine (200 ml), preferably Riesling
- 3/4 cup chicken stock (200 ml)
- small handful of fresh thyme tips or 1 1/2 teaspoon of dried thyme
- 3 small bay leaves
- 1 or 2 cloves and 8 juniper berries (optional, I’ve never tried it)
- pepper to taste
If the sauerkraut is preserved in brine then you’ll need to wash and press it in a colander to strain off the liquid. However, I found some sauerkraut in white wine that only needed to be drained slightly.
Generously grease a casserole dish with lard, goose fat, or plain old vegetable oil and lay half of the sauerkraut in the bottom. In the next layer add the onion, potatoes and the pork (do not add the sausages yet). Season with black pepper and herbs, add cloves and juniper berries if liked. Be careful, little or no additional salt should be required when you take into account the salted pork, chicken stock and the sometimes salty sauerkraut. Place the remaining sauerkraut on top and moisten with the wine and stock. Cover and cook in a low oven (325 F) for 3 hours.
Place the sausages on top and continue to cook uncovered for another 45-60 minutes or until the sausages have browned and are cooked through. Make sure that the liquid in the dish does not cook off. You want about an inch of liquid left at the end so add a splash of wine if it starts to dry out.
Enjoy with a dry Riesling wine.