Gratinéed Onion Soup : Soupe à l'Oignon Gratinée : Lesson 8 : Part 3 : LCB at Home

What I would call "French Onion Soup". Onion soup with toast floating on top and melting cheese on the toasts.

Thank you for not noticing that the floating toast is somewhat more than "toasted" on the edge (okay... charred). I'll delve into a couple of little problems related to that in the notes.

You will however notice that the soup broth is white-ish. That is, cloudy. It seems that there's two versions of this soup, one with a clear and one with a not-clear, onion broth. This one is a not-clear broth.

Although the idea of this cooking exercise is to do the recipes just as they are in the book this particular one was cross-bred with the recipe in La Varenne: Pratiqueto give a slightly different result - - but still traditional.

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Soupe à l'Oignon Gratinée : Gratinéed Onion Soup

Serves: 6

Ingredients

• 6 T butter
• 1 kilo onions, julienne, fine [2#, sliced finely]
  
• flour
• 1 C wine, dry white
• 1 C stock, (guinea hen stock, very special) [or chicken stock]
• 5 C water
• a boquet garnis (thyme, celery, bay leaf, tied in leek greens)
• salt
• pepper
  
• 1 baguette
• gruyere cheese, grated

Procedure

1. Slowly cook the onions in the butter, until soft, golden brown - practically caramelized. This could take 45 minutes
2. Add a couple of tablespoons of flour and stir it through the onions; cook it for 3 or four minutes
3. Slowly add the wine, whisking/stirring the whole while - get it to boiling - it'll thicken a little
4. Then the stock (we had a wonderful, aromatic, stock of guinea hen and fennel flavors) - whisk this in likewise
5. Then the water, stirring that in too
6. Then add the boquet garnis & salt and pepper to taste (enough salt will bring out the sweetness of the onions - - too little will not achieve that)
7. Bring to a boil
   • You can put everything on hold at this point and stash the pot in the 'fridge for a couple of hours; or a day
8. Cover and simmer for half an hour - just before serving (remove the boquet garnis of course)
   
9. toast baguette slices (make the bread yourself too - - hey, why not?)
10. sprinkle the toasts generously, and completely, with cheese
11. and stick under the broiler to brown them
12. float a couple on each bowl of soup

Done

Notes

1. You can make this the day before and do the final boiling at the last moment
2. Cover the entire toasted baguette with cheese to prevent burning of the exposed edges of the bread
3. Ideally the whole pot of soup is broiled in the oven with soup, toast, cheese and all. This requires oven resistant soup bowls. Which we don't have. Thus, the floating bread on the soup. it works okay too; a very nice presentation.

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