French Onion Soup

No visit with my old school friend Donna comes without at least 5 kilos of some kind of fruit or vege attached. Donna was responsible for our recent pear marathon, and before I left her place last Sunday morning, she plied me with a huge bag of huge onions from the shed. 5 kilos exactly.

French onion soup is the kind of thing I order in restaurants occasionally, and don't think about making myself. Seems a bit fiddly, a bit French in a scary kind of way. But with so many onions in the house, so much winter outside, French onion soup kept bubbling up out of my meal planning brain, and yesterday I just had to make it.

I used the recipe for Ultimate Onion Soup from Jamie's Dinners. It's French onion soup made easy and rustic.

1.1 kilos of onions, sliced nice and thin. That kind of weight precision is unusual for a Jamie O recipe, but as luck would have it, three of the giant onions weighed in at precisely 1.1kg. This soup was meant to be. A bay leaf, a handful of fresh thyme, a glug of oil, 6 cloves of garlic, and a very gentle saute in a heavy deep pot, for 20 minutes or so until the onions are translucent, but not too brown.

Did you know that if you light candles right beside the onion chopping board, you will not cry, no matter how many onions you chop or how sensitive your eyes? I don't think Jamie even knows this trick. I usually only light a couple of tea lights for onion chopping, but this was a load, so I lit seven. I quite like the altar-ness of it all.

Compost beauty. I love the colour, the shadows, the lightness.

When the onions in the pan are soft and starting to melt, add 1.3 litres of stock. I used some shop-bought beef and some home made chicken, about half and half, but whatever you've got. Season with salt and pepper, put the lid on the pot and simmer gently for about 20 minutes.

Now for the fun part. Cheese toasties on top.

Rip up some gutsy bread. Thick chewy sourdough, baguette, rye...  just not fluffy sliced bread.
Grate over a generous layer of Gruyere, and put under a hot grill until the cheese is bubbly and the bread is singed on the edges. This is where I departed from Jamie's recipe. He put his bread and cheese on top of the soup in soup bowls and stuck the whole thing in the oven. I wasn't up for that.

Fill bowls with soup and adorn with the rustic cheese toasties.

Did someone say toast?