French Onion Soup

Ever since I was a kid I have loved french onion soup. What's not to love, all that salty oniony, cheesy goodness. Of course as a kid it was Lipton Onion Soup Mix that rocked my world. Back then I had no concept of the obscene amount of sodium contained in each package, I just knew it was pretty tasty stuff that made weird things like meatloaf and sour cream palatable.

I think the first time I had real onion soup was at The Keg Steakhouse with my parents sometime in the early 80's. As a kid The Keg was pretty fine dining, it was an old school steakhouse with wood paneling everywhere and with historical photos of lumberjacks and gold rush miners hanging on the wall. They had a salad bar which I loved and I would pile my plate with baby corn and sunflower seeds. They served baked potatoes with all the fixings, traditional cuts of steak (I always had the bacon wrapped filet mignon, medium rare), sauteed mushrooms and Billy Miner Mudpie. I'm pretty sure the menu hasn't changed much in the last 30 years. I think the appetizers were pretty standard for a steakhouse at the time, stuffed mushrooms, shrimp cocktail, I vaguely remember escargot and of course they had French Onion Soup.

Typically we didn't order appetizers, I mean we were having salad, baked potatoes, steak, not to mention the fact that I would also have worked my way through a couple Shirley Temples served with a side of maraschino cherries and I had to save room for mud pie so really why would you need an appetizer. Its no wonder I was a chubby kid. But I remember seeing that little brown earthenware bowl with the handle encrusted with golden bubbling melted cheese go by and I had to have that. I asked what it was and when my Dad told me French Onion Soup I was amazed. Until then I had only known French Onion Soup to be served in a coffee mug, simply boil water, add soup mix, stir, be careful not to burn your tongue. This delectable bowl of cheesy goodness can't possibly be the same thing! So I asked for a bowl, Mom said no, so I begged for a bowl, Dad said yes :)

I'm sure the Keg's French Onion soup was nothing special, most likely reconstituted broth that they topped up with some croutons and cheese and threw under a broiler but to my 7 or 8 year old taste buds it was heaven. And when I got home that night I discovered that we too had those cool little bowls with the handles, they must have been all the rage as a wedding gift in the 70's. So from then on I would boil water, add soup mix, stir, add croutons, add cheese and be careful not to burn my tongue. Now that was a fancy snack!


Anyway my favourite food blogger posted a recipe for REAL French Onion Soup and I couldn't resist. Besides I'm trying to have more meatless meals for us during the week and this recipe is perfect.

I need to go get those bowls from my Mom's house so I can make it again, but here's how it turned out.

Triple Chocolate Oscar Brownies

Recipe to come, but look at this..

Ok these brownies were alright, good chocolatey flavour but not the right texture. They were almost like fudge whereas I want that chewy brownie experience. So I'm not going to post this recipe as it is by no means the perfect brownie.

Roast Chicken

I am Roast Chicken challenged.

It seems like such a simple thing but I always manage to screw it up either by under or over cooking the poor bird. I also always break the rule of don't try something you haven't mastered when you are having people over for dinner, but since a 4lb chicken is just too big for 2 people I always invite someone over and I just love the image of carving the bird and serving all the fixings like mashed potatoes and stuffing & gravy. In my head a roast chicken is the perfect homey dinner party meal. I just haven't mastered it yet. Sigh.

But I will not give up! Especially now that I'm the mother of a big healthy baby boy who I envision as a teenage eating us out of house & home, for him alone I must learn how to roast the perfect chicken. So tonight I am once again roasting a chicken but its just for me & Ian so I have hope that I'll break free from my past failures and roast the perfect chicken. I have read dozens of recipes from all the pro chefs and homemakers and noted all their techniques. Tonight I am going simple.

Butter
Olive Oil
Salt
Pepper
Onion
Garlic
Potatoes

I loosened the skin around the breast and mashed in 2 tbsp of butter. I greased the outside of the chicken with olive oil and liberally salt & peppered it. I quartered an onion and put half of it inside the chicken and the rest is lying in the roasting pan. I tossed in a handful of garlic cloves about the pan and half a dozen yukon gold potatoes. I'm going with the recommendation of 20 minutes per pound plus 30 minutes at 400F, so that should be 110 minutes or just shy of 2 hours. I'm going to roast it breast side down for 45 minutes and then flip it and roast it breast up for another 45 minutes and then I'll check it and see if it still needs another 20 minutes.

Wish me luck.

Here's what it looked like the first time I took it out of the oven, it looked promising but the under side wasn't done, it needed an additional 30 minutes to get the juices to run clear. I think my mistake was the bird wasn't at room temperature when I put it in the oven. It was tasty but we didn't get to eat it until 9:00. sigh. I'll try again. Next time, room temperature bird, 60 minutes breast side down before I turn it, then another 45 to 60 breast side up.

Things to do with Clementines

We overdosed on tangerines, mandrines and clementines this winter. Great for beating the winter blues and getting lots of vitamin C but we are so done with them now and I still had 2lbs of clementines in the fridge. Here's what I did with them and wow what a great revitalization of a fruit that we were sick of, the cake in particular was exceptionally yummy.

Nigella's Clementine and Almond Cake


Clementine & Vanilla Marmalade

Almond Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

These Almond Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies are the best cookies in the world. I swear. Well, unless you have a nut allergy and then they would be deadly. But if you need a flourless, dairy free option these cookies are for you.

My friend Nicole sent me this recipe and I love it. The only thing I change is I use mixed nuts instead of slivered almonds, its gives the cookie more flavour and texture. I always have pecans & walnuts on hand but last time I made them I had hazelnuts & almond too so it was a nut extravaganza and I think they were the best I've made so far.

Portuguese Winter Soup

So I saw Alton Brown make a Portuguese Kale soup over the holidays and I thought wow that looks good so I decided to try to remake it. Although I didn't have any Chorizo handy so I replaced it with Double Smoke Ukrainian Farmers Sausage and then tweaked the seasoning. And it worked, so yummy and good for you!

1lb Farmer's Sausage or Chorizo
2 medium onions
6 cloves of garlic
4 large kale leaves
1 tin chick peas
1 tin diced tomatoes
1 L chicken stock
1 tsp thyme
2 bay leaves
1 pinch red pepper flakes
1/4 tsp smoked sweet Spanish paprika

Roughly chop up sausage and saute in olive oil until it begins to brown in a large soup pot, I used my Le Creuset Dutch oven. Mince onions and add to sausage and cook until softened but not brown. Add garlic and cook for a couple minutes to mellow the flavour. Add in stock and scrape the bottom of the pot to deglaze. Add in tomatoes, chick peas and seasonings and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and cook for about 15 minutes. Stem and roughly chop the kale then add to the pot, cook for another 5 to 10 minutes to wilt the kale. Salt & Pepper to taste, I usually just add pepper since the sausage is quite salty. Serve with crusty bread.

HOMEMADE ICE CREAM!!!

You must go buy an ice cream maker, now! Seriously. Go. Go now.

I credit William Sonoma whom I don't really like as I find them to be snooty and overpriced but I'm on their mailing list and low and behold they had a 1 day sale on the Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker and it just happened to be in red, with a extra bucket and it just so happened to be my birthday so we went and got one. I have no regrets.

I have 2 memories of making homemade ice cream before now and both of them are fond. The first was at my Grandma's cabin in LaPine Oregon one summer. She had the old a fashion kind that was a wooden bucket that you filled with ice & salt and a metal canister sat in the middle with a iron crank. I remember we all took turns for what seemed like an eternity turning the crank and adding more ice and salt and after what seemed like a ridiculously labour intensive process we were finally all rewarded with a small bowl of glorious homemade vanilla ice cream. I think I was vaguely disappointed in the fact that it was vanilla but that was when I was young and foolish and didn't understand the pure simple elegance of what is vanilla. We also probably didn't use a vanilla bean.

My second memory of homemade ice cream was in Sandy Hill's 8th grade science class. I think he was demonstrating the use of salt to raise the boiling point of water and how it makes ice water cooler, or something like that, clearly the lesson to me was homemade ice cream rocks. He used a similar old fashion maker to what my grandmother had but his was broken somehow and using it involved someone standing on a desk with one foot on top of the maker as we furiously cranked away.

Well I'm happy to say that ice cream makers have come a long way and are very simple in design. Put bowl in freeze the day before, make a custard or at least I like the custard kind best but you can literally just mix milk, cream and sugar and use that. Let the custard chill in the fridge for a couple hours. Pour into bowl, turn on maker and 20 minutes later you have pure creamy goodness.

I can't claim the recipe as I just followed Cuisinart's instructions although I did use half & half instead of heavy cream, and next time I make some (tomorrow) I'm going to use a tad less sugar. But that is the beauty of making your own ice cream, you can control the fat & the sugar.