French onion soup

French onion soup: Essentially glorified gravy, at least the way I do it...damn tasty though.

Ok a couple of things before you get blending time to set up shop...


EQUIPMENT:

• A big pot -
• a blender jug or hand will do
• a laddle- for laddling
• a wooden spoon
• butter knife
• chopping bord
• sharp knife for chopping veggies
• a medum sized bowl.

Ok a note about the big pot, if your not sure its big enough for 8 servings fill it with water and laddle into your soup bowls count how many it can fill. Ill go into ingirdient math for optimum servings in a mo.

INGRIDIENTS:

Four bowls of soup:

•  1 and 1/2 litre of Beef stock
• Three large onions
• 50g unsalted butter/ oil for frying the onion
• optional - seasoning

Eight bowls of soup:

• 2 1/2 litre of beef stock
• 4 1/2 large onions
• 50g unsalted butter/ oil for frying the onion
• optional - seasoning

Twelve (really?) bowls of soup:

• 3 1/2 litres of beef stock
• 6 large onions
• 50g unsalted butter/ oil for frying the onion
• optional - seasoning

Got it? Good. Then lets begin.

• Firstly, stick your onions in the fridge for about 20 minutes, this will stop the stinging from being so powerful that it leads to full on 'I'll never let go Jack' ovary madness. 
• 
  
• At some time during this fill the medium bowl with water and have it next to your chopping station, you should put all off your chopped veg and fruit in cold water to prevent browning while you work elsewhere (Thank you, Grandma).
•  
• When your onions are readily chilled extract them one at a time and begin chopping. Were aiming for slices NOT dices here people and for the love of melted cheese remember to peel the damn things first!
• After slicing up your onions, put the big Pot on your hob and light a small heat, dump the chunk of butter in and let it melt/ pour your oil.
• 
  
• Once melted/heated add the sliced onions, stirring and simmering untill the onions turn golden brown and begin to caramelize......stick with the colour guide if unsure. This should take around 30 minutes.
• 
  
• Once they have browned but are not burned (they should still be floppy, add the Beef stock to the pot and bring to the boil. Stirr for five minutes and reduce to a simmer and leave for twenty minutes stirring occasionally. Adding seasoning by your own will.
• 
  
• Take the pot off the heat and break out the blender. Now if you have a jug blender just pour it in and blend untill silky smoothe, If you are using a hand blender blend for about ten minutes in circular motion untill you are happy with the mixture.
• 
  
• Pour the blended soup into another bowl to keep in the firdge WARNING: do not place soup in fridge untill it has cooled naturally first.

There you go, French onion soup, good with french stick slices and melted swiss cheese, so I'm told.

Any questions?

Soups

Soup: Liquid sustinance, dissmal nessesity or mind blowing flavour fuck, discuss.

My housemate has been on a similar cooking spree much like my own and has taught me the joy of soup. Yes i know, bland listless soup, the go to food when all other options have been exhausted, the winter warmer, liquid mush. But actually, as I discoverd, quite tasty and incredibly easy to make.
And I did, successfuly and the recipe I followed of said housemates own making provided me with eight meals provided I kept the remaining soup in the fridge.
It was also quite cheap to make and so I will be putting up the recipe shortly....as in now-

GRANDMA's BACK!

Grandma: The shady cook from 'Grandma's comfort food' whose recipes lie a third of the time, and I have the burnt enchiladas to proove it!


Was shopping at sainsbury's recently when while waiting at the till I saw an interesting thing on a nearby display stand.

'Grandma's Best Recipes'

hmmm....... I instandly wanderd out of the que and picked up the cute country designed book. I flick few the pages and sure enough I see a few of the same recipes from 'Comfort foods' and a ton of new ones. The book was reasonably cheap at £5.99 so I decided to purchase it and see if Grandma was still the lying whore I knew she could be.

New recipes include soups, sauces, fried dishes, cakes even scones (if I liked scones) the book even has prettily designed labels at the back that read: Made with love by.....  and baked with love by....... you know if you were going to gift your successful endevours to someone. But I wouldnt cut things out of a book this pretty....

Is it useful? Well we'll have to wait and see.

For now I'm going to watch some more stargate universe and probably forget to do my creative piece draft fro tomorrows lecture. Hazzah!

An Update

Update: where by new information on an ongoing or new event is received and quickly forgotten.


Howdy troopers,

Its been a month and a bit since my last blog so here's an update:

Number of recipes tried: 2
Number of recipes W1Ns: 1
Number of recipe FAILS: 2
Number of assignments done: 2
Number Ignored: 4
Number of xmas presents bought: 1
Number still to get: 30+
Number of television episodes watched: Iv'e lost count but def 100+
Number of module reading read: 0


So yeah...... not bad, not great either, don't get me wrong I've had fun this past month I mean October was BRUTAL but november was cool. The christmas fair opened up in town and before that was a nice fireworks eve  with friends but now is the start of DECEMBER!

23 days till XMAS bitches! And I ave so much to do, assignments FYP, shopping, visiting.....

sigh...

Then I rememberd 'oh yeah! I has a blog!' So I logged in and low and behold, the old fashioned wallpaper I once thought was quaint now killed my soul alittle so I have changed things up once again into fluffy pink madness to brighten my mood.

Anywho I thought I'd give another push for doing more cooking, having been confined to ready meals for money problems which thankfully no longer exsist. So I will be cooking more, Im planning to bake mince pies for family and friends, yay!

Some things dont change though....I still suck at baking, made a batch of cookies last night curtesy of a few mixed recipes I had, I put to much sugar in because damn did they come out crunchy.... and alittle burnt so keeping with in tradition there  :)

So watch this Space and i'll try and keep you posted.