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Onion Soup With Cheese Toasts

01.22.2014 by J. Doe // 2 Comments

The night before The Dog died, I made soup. It seemed like a reasonable thing to do.

 

I didn’t want to leave the house to get ingredients; I didn’t want to leave him. He was asleep, mostly, and would not have known, but I would have. I poked through the cabinets and located a large bag of onions, and briefly considered making French Onion Soup Grilled Cheese, but what I really wanted was the comfort of soup. Also, it seemed like with that many onions in the house, there ought to be a way to make onion soup, even though I lacked beef broth, which I thought was a requirement.

 

David Tanis solved that problem, as well as another (which was very nice of him, especially given we’ve never met) – I had an abundance of half-empty bottles of red wine sitting in my fridge, waiting to be used, left over from my unfortunate jewelry party. Tanis’ onion soup draws its rich flavor from red wine, rather than beef broth, as well as from cooking the onions until a rich golden brown. It’s a real treat, yet quite simple, and even though it doesn’t bill itself as such, if you omit the cheese on the toasts, perhaps just using homemade herbed croutons, you’d have a lovely vegan meal. Tanis uses red onions in his version, but I had a bag of plain yellow onions, and they worked well.

 

There is something soothing about eating soup, of course, but also something soothing about making one so simple: Slice, then simmer, then savor.

 

Onion Soup with Cheese Toasts

 

Onion Soup With Cheese Toasts
 
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Author: Adapted from David Tanis, The New York Times
Serves: 6
Ingredients
  • Olive oil
  • 3 lbs onions, peeled, sliced ⅛-inch thick
  • Salt and pepper
  • 1 cup dry red wine
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 1 small bunch thyme, tied with string
  • 8 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
  • 6 slices day-old bread, lightly toasted
  • 6 ounces grated Gruyère
  • 1 tsp chopped thyme
Instructions
  1. Set 2 large, wide skillets over medium-high heat. When pans are hot, add 1 tablespoon oil and a large handful of sliced onions to each pan. Season onions with salt and pepper, then sauté, stirring occasionally, until they are a ruddy dark brown, about 10 minutes
  2. Transfer onions to soup pot and return pans to stove. Pour ½ cup water into each pan to deglaze it, scraping with a wooden spoon to dissolve any brown bits. Pour deglazing liquid into soup pot. Wipe pans clean with paper towel and begin again with more oil and sliced onions. Continue until all onions are used. Don’t crowd pans or onions won’t brown sufficiently.
  3. Place soup pot over high heat. Add wine, bay leaves, thyme bunch and garlic. Simmer rapidly for 5 minutes, then add 8 cups water and return to boil. Turn heat down to maintain a gentle simmer. Add 2 teaspoons salt. Cook for 45 minutes. Taste and adjust seasoning. (May be prepared to this point up to 2 days in advance.)
  4. Remove the thyme and bay leaves.
  5. Make the cheese toasts: Heat broiler. Place toasted bread on baking sheet. Mix grated cheese with chopped thyme and sage, along with a generous amount of pepper. Heap about 1 ounce of cheese mixture on each toast. Broil until cheese bubbles and browns slightly. Ladle soup into wide bowls and top with toast.
Notes
Tanis' original recipe calls for red onions, but I just used yellow onions since I had them on hand. He also addes 1 tsp chopped sage to the cheese toasts, but I didn't have any so I just used thyme alone. When I reheated the soup for lunch the next day, I simply put sliced gruyere on the bread and toasted that, omitting the herbs and the grating. I think I liked it best that way, but it was all good.
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Categories // The Joy of Cooking Tags // onions, soup

Rice and Smothered Cabbage Soup

12.28.2013 by J. Doe // Leave a Comment

I know: I can’t think of a worse name for a soup, either. If someone I knew said they were serving this soup for dinner, it would almost assuredly be someone who sounded like my mother, and who would add on equally unappetizing statements like, It’s good for you. Or maybe something about how children in some other country were starving. Castor oil would undoubtedly enter the discussion.

 

The first time I made this soup wasn’t quite that bad, but it wasn’t that good, either. I didn’t read the instructions completely, so I just roughly chopped up the cabbage instead of taking a bit of extra time and slicing it thinly as directed. Also, The Child got hungry, so I cut short the cooking time on the cabbage by about a half hour. Not my finest hour in the kitchen: the resulting soup tasted nutritious, in a drink-your-vitamins kind of way, and cabbage-y. Not horrible, to be sure, but nothing I really wanted to serve again.

 

I couldn’t understand why Marcella Hazan would do that to me, so I tried again, and followed the instructions more carefully, allowing the thinly-sliced cabbage to cook as directed, over a very low heat, for a very long time.

 

This time, it was all I could do not to eat all the cabbage right out of the pot. All of it. Now, I like cabbage, especially when it’s called sauerkraut and there’s a hot dog involved – this cabbage with nothing like that. It was meltingly soft and mild.

 

You can make the cabbage ahead of time, if you can restrain yourself from eating it, and then finish making the soup whenever you’re ready. The soup is pretty straightforward. It’s very thick, closer to a risotto than a soup. I keeps well overnight, and the next day makes a superb lunch. It’s warming, and filling, and makes the whole house smell so good that you don’t mind being stuck indoors. And no guilt: it’s good for you.

 

Call it whatever you want. I call it The Soup That Goes To Eleven.

 

The original recipe is in Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. I ran across it on Orangette, who read about it on The Wednesday Chef.

 

The recipe for Smothered Cabbage is here.

 

Rice and Smothered Cabbage Soup

Rice and Smothered Cabbage Soup
 
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Author: Molly Wizenberg, adapted from Marcella Hazan
Serves: 4
Ingredients
  • 1 batch Smothered Cabbage (see below)
  • 2 cups vegetable broth
  • 1 cup water, or more as needed
  • ⅔ cup Arborio rice
  • 2 Tbsp. unsalted butter
  • ⅓ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese, plus more for serving
  • Kosher salt
  • pepper
Instructions
  1. In a large heavy pot , combine the cabbage, the broth, and 1 cup of water, and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Stir in the rice, and then lower the heat so that the soup bubbles at a slow but steady simmer. Cook uncovered, stirring occasionally, until the rice is tender but firm to the bite, about 20 minutes. If you find that the soup is becoming too thick, add a little water. The soup should be pretty dense, but there should still be some liquid.
  2. When the rice is done, turn off the heat, and stir in the butter and the grated Parmesan. Taste, and correct for salt. Serve with black pepper and more Parmesan.
Notes
The original recipe calls for chicken or beef broth, which would be fantastic, but I always use vegetable broth, on the theory that there's a chance The Child will eat it.
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Categories // The Joy of Cooking Tags // cabbage, rice, soup, vegetarian

Curried Butternut Squash Soup

03.09.2013 by J. Doe // 7 Comments

With the merciful end of the legal bills, and generous scholarship for The Child, the financial crunch starts to ease … so much so, that in February, she and I attend an antique show. The Child ingratiates herself with a vendor selling antique radios, and somehow persuades them to sell her a 1951 Capeheart model, still functional, for $5. She lugs it from booth to booth, proudly, all afternoon.

I pick up a much lighter-weight, but more expensive, vintage Elizabeth David French cookbook.

On getting it home, I decide I’m not really that excited about the cookbook, but I am suddenly excited about cookbooks in general. Specifically, the idea of new cookbooks. So, a few days later, I head off to the used book store, where I pick up a baking book. And then a week or two later, I go back and get another one.

Then I start looking through all the cookbooks I already have, looking for something. Something new. Something different.

Lots of things sound good enough for me to sticky-note for later, but I don’t want any of them right now.

As I dug further into the cookbooks, I ran across a recipe that I’ve had for ages – but it didn’t come from a cookbook. Instead, it came from the mother of a former friend. I’d forgotten about the recipe, and mostly forgotten about the friend, and so haven’t made it for years. But I used to like it, and it was the first soup I ever made from scratch. Something old, familiar, and oddly comforting.

It’s easy enough to make: Pretty much just simmer the squash and onions until everything is completely soft, then puree the whole thing. An immersion blender would probably work well, but a regular ole blender or food processor work fine too.

Tart, crunchy apple slices make a nice contrast with the spicy curry and smooth soup, but I didn’t have any, so I cut up some crusty old bread into cubes and pretended they were croutons. The absorbed just enough of the liquid to become very tasty, but still with a bit of crunch.

Curried Butternut Squash Soup
 
Print
Prep time
15 mins
Cook time
35 mins
Total time
50 mins
 
Author: Sprung At Last
Serves: 6
Ingredients
  • 4 Tbsp butter
  • 2 cups onion chopped
  • 4-5 tsp curry powder
  • 2 medium butternut squash
  • 3 cups stock
  • 1 cup apple juice
  • Salt and black pepper to taste
  • 1 granny Smith apple, shredded, for garnish
Instructions
  1. Melt butter, add onions and curry, and cook, covered, over low heat until onions are tender.
  2. Peel the squash, scrape out seeds. Chop.
  3. When onions are tender, pour in stock, squash, and apples, and bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer, partly covered, until squash are tender, 25 minutes.
  4. Strain soup, reserving liquid. Process solids in blender until smooth, adding 1 cup of liquid.
  5. Return soup to pot, add remaining cooking liquid and then apple juice, until soup is desired consistency.
  6. Add salt and pepper to taste. Rewarm and serve.
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This is my contribution to Weekend Cooking, hosted by Beth Fish Reads. Why not swing by and see what other savory delights await?

Categories // The Joy of Cooking Tags // butternut squash, recipes, soup

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