For this year’s Food Revolution Day, Jamie Oliver shared ‘10 recipes to save your life‘ – learn how to master these dishes and you can successfully cook nutritious food for yourself and your family for the rest of your life.
As Ambassadors for the revolution, we’re all about inspiring others, sharing skills and knowledge, and helping people to build confidence in the kitchen.
My alternative to Jamie’s Minestrone Soup is the one and only French Onion Soup. It’s a fantastic example of how you can transform a humble ingredient by concentrating the flavour. You have a couple of options here: make a relatively quick and acceptable soup, or show it the love, give it the time and attention it deserves, and make a beautifully deep, complex and truly sensational bowl of joy.
Ingredients:
- 500g brown onions
- 50g butter
- 6 garlic cloves, finely sliced
- 1 tbsp brown sugar
- 1 glass white wine
- 1 tsp fresh thyme leaves
- Splash of cognac or brandy (optional)
- 1 tbsp plain flour
- 1.5 litres beef stock
- Olive oil
- Salt & pepper
- 150g Gruyere cheese
- ½ baguette
Method:
Finely slice the onions and sweat them in a pan on a very low heat with the butter, sugar and a little olive oil for about an hour until beautifully soft, caramelised and almost melting.
Increase the heat, add the garlic and thyme and cook for a few minutes before carefully flambéing with the cognac/brandy if using.
Stir in the flour and cook it out for two of minutes.
Add the wine and let it bubble away and reduce by a third.
Add the beef stock, season and simmer for a further 30 minutes.
Serve the soup with Gruyere-topped croutons – they’re essential.
I like to make the croutons by frying garlic-rubbed slices of baguette in a pan with butter until golden, but you can just toast them or bake them in the oven to dry them out. Pop them onto the soup, grate Gruyere cheese over the top, and slide everything under the grill or into the oven until gorgeously molten.
Enjoy!
