Finding the chase and cutting to it

I’ve never had french onion soup – there’s a fundamental problem with it when I eat out and that’s the edition of a layer of cheese on the top.

I love cheese and onion and gravy – believe me, French onion soup is the equivalent of onion gravy and who doesn’t like onion gravy? – so it’s a wonder this isn’t my ideal dish apart from the fact the cheese is melted in to the dish making bolusing difficult.

I think due to lockdown, the mincing attachment for my mixer came with a “continuous slicer/grater” which promises to process high volumes of veggies and other materials quickly and efficiently. I had visions of it languishing in my cupboard. But I’ve been making a few soups recently and thought I’d give it a go.

I even mentioned in during the weekly Covid-call we’ve been having with our friends. “Oh, I tried that,” said Chris a particularly keen home cook and someone I consider the Ivan Lendl out of us when it comes to cooking: text book perfection. “I couldn’t make a decent one. Disaster every time.

Daunted, me? No way. I looked at several recipes, in particular the directions and formed my plan.

I have to say, I wasn’t helped by the fact the principle recipe I chose was for a soup maker rather than cooking in a pot on the stove. But I’m a human being, most adaptable creature on the planet; I could do this.

Bearing in mind the onion gravy comment, that was one of the things I did differently. I put gravy granules in as well as the beef stock.

You also need to bear in mind you get a burnt layer on your pan bottom. Comes off with the second stage of the cooking but is a little nerve wracking to look at 5 minutes into cooking. I did wash the pan immediately too.

Yeah, yeah, yeah; what was it like?

Good, actually. A lot like onion gravy.