Welcome to my second cooking tutorial for café du Chat Noirs, today we are making french onion soup or as it’s called in France “Soupe a l’oignon” topped with a cheese crouton.
The ingredients you’ll need to make soup for 4 main or 6 starters are :-
4 med onions finely sliced
The skins from the 4 onions
4tsp olive oil
5/6 bay leaves
1tsp dried parsley
1tsp dried Thyme
1&1/2 pints cold water
1 or 2 cloves of garlic finely chopped
4 beef stock pots
1 veg stock pot
1&1/2 pints of boiling water
2 tsp heaped corn flour
Cold water to mix
Large glass dry white wine
50 ml brandy or cognac
Salt & pepper to season, stock pots already have seasoning so don’t add till very end
For cheesy crouton )(per person
Two slices of baguette per person) for main or one for starter)
20grms butter
50 grms cheese (30% mozzarella 70% cheddar)
traditionally the crouton is topped with Gruyère cheese but today I’m using a mix of mozzarella and cheddar
If you would like to make this soup to be vegetarian you can by replacing the 4 beef stock cubes with 3 vegetarian stock cubes plus the one in recipe so a total of 4, then instead of thickening with corn flour and water use the “beef” bistro granules which are actually not beef but vegetarian to thicken giving the beef flavour with out the meat