French Onion Soup

V and I had to bring forward our little Xmas party because he will be away that week. Nothing fancy, just a few good friends, and simple rustic food. I was determined to make French Onion Soup. It should be a no brainer right?

Well, I printed off a Julia Child recipe and the instructions and ingredients were simple enough. For soups, the key ingredient that differentiates between a great soup and an average soup, is the stock! So off we go, to Jones the Grocer, and picked up 4 packs of beef stock, a baguette, and two tubs of salmon dip. Total costs - S$83. Huh? That's expensive for just stock. But hey, you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. And in Singapore, its expensive to eat healthy and well. I will blog about this issue another time.

Dry white wine - bought two bottles of Chilean dry white wine for S$32. Not too bad. Started off with chopping the onions enough to fill a big bowl. I once saw an episode of Master Chef hosted by Gordon Ramsay. The first cut of the competition is the ability to chop onions evenly. Ok, here we go....I concentrated on evenness!

Sauteed the onions as instructed but Julia says 'till it colours'. Wait a minute, till it turns transparent or caramelized? Sugar is added to the frying process but the onions were sweating and making a little stock pool with the butter and olive oil. I must have gotten it wrong.. I learnt later from Sheree at Chez Papa, that you are suppose to heat the pan till very hot so that the onions brown nicely. In the end, after adding the stock and white wine, and boiling it for 90 mins in an open pot, it turned out so rich and brown and absolutely delicious.

I served it without gruyere or parmesan cheese broiled and melted on top - did not have enough hands to do that and V was busy entertaining the guests. Next round - need to plan and anticipate a little earlier. Overall, everyone enjoyed the soup with a nice toasted slice of baguette and Mediterranean salad mixed with organic extra virgin olive oil, sea salt, pepper, balsamic vinegar from Modena, old English mustard, and some minced garlic. Simple dressing but tastes so good. Roasted quails with thyme and rosemary butter, and seafood pasta with prawns and scallops.

Bon Appetit!