French food Archives - Mamma's Cooking

Every time I go to a new restaurant and they have French Onion Soup on the menu, I try it. I have made many, many batches of my own and finally wrote down the recipe! I make it at home now for my family, so that I can use gluten-free bread to make the toasted cheese crouton on top. It is perfect for a cold winter night.

French Onion Soup

Ingredients

2 Tablespoons of olive oil

6 to 8 small sweet onions

5 cloves of garlic

2 Tablespoons olive oil

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon pepper

5 sprigs of thyme

2 sprig of rosemary

2 Tablespoons of balsamic vinegar

4 cups of broth (I like to use 3 cups of beef and 1 cup of chicken broth)

Bread (I used gluten-free bread)

About 2 cups of shredded mozzarella

Directions

Heat olive oil in pan over medium heat. Add onions, herbs and spices. Cover and cook for 5 minutes. Stir and add balsamic vinegar. Stir for a minute or two then cover and cook covered for another 5 minutes. Repeat until onions are soft and fragrant (about 20 to 30 minutes). Add the broth and stir. Simmer for about 15 minutes. Toast bread with cheese and place on top of each mug or bowl of soup or place soup in oven safe bowls and add toast with cheese and put under broiler for a minute or two.

Serve this up on a snowy day with some mussels or a salad, then you have a very easy fancy dinner.

If onion soup is not your thing, you can find more of my soup recipes here:

Sweet Potato Coconut Curry Soup and my favorite soups from 2016

Next Wednesday, August 15, 2012 marks the date that would have been JuliaChild’s 100^th birthday. Restaurants around the country are doingspecial menus to honor Julia Child. PBS has lots of specials on TV among otherfun things on their website. Cooks and Bloggers around the country are writingand cooking to honor her memory. Here is one with 8 ideas on how to honor Julia from Robin Shreeves at the Mother Nature Network. I am going to try to make one recipe a daynext week from one of her cookbooks to honor her legacy. The French Chef was the first cooking show Iwatched on TV growing up. We watched a lot of PBS. She pioneered the era of cooking shows whichhas now exploded with popularity to a point I’m sure she probably couldn’t evenhave imagined. We all like to pretend we are cooking on a cooking show in thekitchen (don’t tell me you have never done it!) while making a meal and veryfew of us will ever get the chance to, but she made gourmet cooking accessibleto home cooks.

I have been reviewing Julie Child recipes from Mastering the Art of French Cooking to find some easyones and maybe one challenging one to make this week. If you are bored with your regular weeklymeals, picking a theme and sticking to it one week a month or however often youhave the energy for, can help spice things up (pun intended)! Or choose one night a week to make a newrecipe or make one of those hundreds you have pinned on Pinterest.

Pick a Julia Child recipe to make this week inhonor of what would have been her 100^th birthday. Don’t beintimidated. You don’t have to pick sweet breads or duck, or a fancy multi-step,multi-ingredient recipe. Make a quiche, roast chicken, pork chops, boiledartichokes or buttered green beans. It’s still a Julia Child recipe. Her goalwas to make gourmet cooking accessible to home cooks.

These are some of the recipes I’m hoping to make this week:

Chocolate Almond Cake, p677. Supposedly one Julia’sfavorites.

Boeuf Bourguignon, p.315. I’ve never made it and think Iwill while watching Julie and Julia.

Potato Leek Soup, p.37. One of my favorites. I’ve never madeJulia’s recipe though.

Quiche au fruits de mer, p.149. Sounds really fancy, butreally is just eggs, shallots or onions, butter (of course), lobster, shrimp orcrab, cheese, cream, tomato paste, salt and pepper. She also adds Madeira ordry vermouth, but I don’t have those and don’t usually by whole bottles ofthings for a couple of tablespoons, so I’ll use something else like whitebalsamic vinegar. I might even buy the crust. Shhh…don’t tell.

Crepes, p.190. These are just fancy pancakes that my kidswill hopefully love!

Moules A La Mariniere, p. 227. This is one of the onlyrecipes that I am repeating. I’ve made it before and loved it!

Poulets Grilles a la diable (Chicken Broiled with Mustard,Herbs, and Bread Crumbs), p.265. I chose this recipe because I already haveeverything for this in the house! It is similar to how I usually make chicken,but with basting. I don’t usually baste. Maybe I’ll do it, if I can stop thetwins from reaching into the oven.

Roasted Pork marinated in Marinade Simple (Lemon Juice andHerb Marinade), p.376. I also chose this one because I have most of the ingredients.

Artichauts au Naturel (whole boiled artichokes), p. 424. Probablythe easiest of the recipes. We’ll see what the kids think of these.

I’ll probably pick a couple other vegetable recipes too.

If you don’t want to cook, go out and have some oysters anda glass of champagne and have a toast to Julia Child!

#CookforJulia