Sunday, September 8, 2013

Channeling my inner Julia

As you're probably well aware I love to cook. On top of that I've developed a random obsession with Julia Child over the years. We have unlimited access to all her cooking videos thanks to Amazon Watch and we even got to see her kitchen on our DC trip a few years ago. I love watching her videos because a) she teaches a lot of great tips that you don't learn anything else and b) she's really hilarious to watch as she sends food flying or accidentally pours sherry in place of oil in a pan. My parents were nice enough to give me "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" for Christmas and I'm excited to say that I finally made one of her recipes! Much to Jonathan's excitement, I successfully made french onion soup. Take a look:




It's pretty easy to make, just a little time consuming. The key is to cook the onions for as long as possible. Julia says to cook them 30-35 minutes. I cooked them down for an hour and a half and they still weren't as browned as I wanted. However, it was 9pm on Sunday night and I wanted to go to sleep eventually. Then you just add either beef broth or a mixture of beef and chicken broth, salt and pepper, and a splash of sherry (although the sherry is optional). Then I broiled some toasted bread topped with gruyere to finish off the soup. Quite tasty! I know what you're going to say, "but you don't like onions!" Well I like the flavor cooked onions bring to dishes. I've always like french onion soup, but I can only eat so much of the onions. So I still enjoyed it and left the really onion-y soup at the bottom of my bowl for Jonathan to finish off. He didn't complain too much haha. 

I'm pretty sure this is the simplest recipe in Julia Child's cookbook. The rest of her recipes look pretty intimidating but I like a challenge. I just need to make the time to get all the right ingredients!

See, we're best buds!
-Chelsey