Reuben Cooks "food is time travel"

After I have been super inspired and charged up by the movie Julie and Julia more than a year ago, today was the day I woke up and felt like I had to look through my cook books for some inspiration for this lovely Winters day.

 I paged though a lot of cook books, an then decided to open Reuben Riffels signed copy for some inspiration.  This amazing book full of heartfelt stories and beautiful pictures about his cooking life was all that I needed to do my "bucket-list" of wanna-do's from my wall.  French onion soup was one of them.

As we traveled through Paris, I was thinking back to the yummy crunchy french loaves "baguette" we discovered in the most amazing small bakeries and comfort eating in sweet buttery onions caramelized to perfection brought back so many memories.

 As I sliced the super sweet onions and the aroma in the house was this of garlic and butter, my heart was happy as I was thinking of my earlier shopping in the cheese department, and I wanted something stronger or with better character than brie that was on my list - camenbrini sold out ;-(  I did try the brie as Reuben suggested and also Provolone Piccante and imported old Gouda that was supper yummy on the crunchy baguette with olive oil and a little garlic.  This little mini breads scooped up the yummy onions and was melt in the mouth full of flavor and yummy-ness.

To make the soup a little richer in the future, I though of roasting off some marrow bone and adding it to the soup when it boils for the 20mins suggested.

  French onion soup

serves 6

6 big sweet onions - peeled and sliced into thin strips
60g butter
Salt and black pepper
1/4 cup sherry
9 cups clear beef stock
24 round slices of sourdough bread - I used baguette
115g goats milk Brie cheese, cut into thin slices
1 tablespoon chopped fresh chives
1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves

Method

Sweat the onions in the butter in a large saucepan over medium-low heat for 30min or until golden brown.  Season with salt and pepper.  Deglaze the pan with the sherry and cook for a further 2min. Add the beef stock and simmer for 15min.  Season to taste with salt and pepper if necessary.

To prepare the croutons, preheat the oven to 180 degrees.  Toast the sourdough bread slices in the oven for 10-12min or until golden brown.  Place a slice of Brie on each crouton and slice under the grill until cheese has melted.  To serve, ladle soup into shallow bowls.  Arrange 4 croutons in each bowl.  Sprinkle with chives and thyme., and grind over some black pepper.

I also used a bay leaf and garlic and thyme.

YUM!  Eat your heart out "frenchies".  I also think this will make a fabulous entertaining starter