French onion soup with a Tuscan twist

OK - so the photo does not do it justice. In fact it looks pretty awful. Good job it tastes totally yummy.

I call it a French onion soup with a Tuscan twist - because it has cured ham in it - and apparently that is a Tuscan touch to a traditional French recipe.

So here is the recipe and my economical cooking method.

French Onion Soup with a Tuscan twist

4 large white or yellow onions
1 red onion
2 rashers of pancetta cut into lardons
2 litres of chicken stock
1 large baking potato
3 tablespoons of dried parsley

Use a heavy bottomed, cast iron pan with a lid if you have one.

Chop the onions thinly, then fry in a tablespoon of olive oil, with some generous twists of pepper and the lardons.

This is not a lot of oil, but the fat from the lardons will help the frying, when it starts to dry out in the saucepan, add a bit of water rather than any more oil, cover and leave the onions to sweat for a couple of  minutes until they are starting to become translucent and soft.

Add the stock and bring to the boil - taste and season if you need to, but the pancetta is quite salty so go carefully if adding more salt.

Cut the potato into small cubes, less than a centimetre, without peeling, then add to the soup and just bring it briefly back to the boil.

Then turn off the heat and cover the saucepan with its lid - then cover again with a layer of aluminium paper.

Leave to stew in its own heat while you go off and do something more interesting - I went for a 5km walk with the dog and came back starving.

To serve, just heat up - the small cubes of potato will have cooked in the residual heat in the pan and their starchiness will thicken the soup, throw in the parsley, stir through and munch a bowlful with some home baked bread.

Al fresco

After days of cooking a meal from scratch every night, Thea and I kicked back and relaxed with some al fresco dinner in the sunshine, some cheese, some bread, some crackers, some butter and (for me at least) a lovely glass of chilled white wine!

Day 8 chicken and pasta in creamy thyme sauce and some elderflower champagne

With the elderflowers finally in bloom, I got my champagne laid up.

The recipe I use is very simple:

Fill the bottom of a shallow bowl with elderflower heads (at least 20), try to have as few stalks as possible as they are bitter.

Cover in a thick layer of sugar, then pour over a litre of boiling water then a litre of cold water.

Add 50g of citric acid and juice and zest of one lemon or the juice and zest of 4 lemons if not using citric acid. Once again I have my lovely North African supermarket to thank for the citric acid - a complete fluke find on the shelf in there one day last year so I grabbed a couple of packets as it is getting harder and harder to get hold of.

Cover the bowl and place in a warm dark spot for 24 hours.

Sieve the liquid and pour off into screw topped bottles, either glass or plastic bottles designed for fizzy drinks, and leave to stand for another 14 days in a warm dark place, until the wine settles and clears. I like to squeeze every last drop from the flower heads, and if the liquid doesn't have that slightly sticky feel to it, I add another tablespoon of sugar to the bottle it is being decanted into.

There is no yeast required as the flower heads provide enough yeast to set the process off.

If you just want cordial, then once bottled, put in the fridge to stop any fermentation continuing.

I like to make up some elderflower ice cubes, and then you can just pop one of those into a glass of white wine, top with some lemonade or fizzy water for a summery spritzer, or add a dash of lemon vodka for a more potent cocktail.

In total 6 litres of champagne bottled up, and another 2 tubs of elderflowers settling for some cordial.


Day 8 - Chicken and Pasta in a Creamy Thyme sauce

Cook some pasta twirls or shells or tubes, drain, rinse with cold water and leave to one side, the cold helps to set the pasta so that it does not go mushy before you come to use it.

Gently fry a couple of chicken breasts in garlic oil, add 500ml of chicken stock, and a veg of your choice, I used green beans from the freezer but anything that you have to hand will do, carrots, peas, broccoli are all good for this.

Once the veg is tender, add the leaves from several sprigs of fresh thyme, as well as 150ml of cream.  I like to use real cream as it is delicate enough for the thyme, creme fraiche has too much of a flavour of its own for me and swamps the thyme.

Cook gently for a couple of minutes, then add the pasta back into the pan.  Stir the sauce through the pasta and there you go.  Another larder recipe.

Only another 2 to go - I am running out of fresh veg and dairy staples now though, may need to go and give the larder a good staring at for inspiration tomorrow.

Day 5 - Open Lattice Mediterranean Tart

Been another busy busy day here, found out today as well that one of my contracts has been extended - which in theory is great, but in reality I was looking forward to reclaiming some of my afternoons for myself and the garden, or my studio,which is calling and calling me.

Still at least this is the weekend, and I can relax and have a glass of wine or two - except of course then my teen tells me she is off out on Saturday night and I have to drive around town as a taxi fetching her home!  No rest for the wicked or so they say.


So onto tonight's recipe

Open Lattice Mediterranean Tart

The base is a (slightly) out of date pre-rolled flaky pastry sheet that I found in the back of the fridge.

( I don't even recall why I bought it, perhaps to make some buffet sausage rolls for a dinner party, or some spicy pastries, anyway there it was, and not even green and furry so by my standards perfectly edible.)

I trimmed it to fit the oven tray, then piled on mozzarella cheese, a thinly sliced red onion, some red pepper,  some chorizo sausage, then some more mozzarella, sprinkled a bit of garlic salt on top, black pepper and some dried basil, then laid over the left over pastry sheet cut into strips to create the lattice.

Once cooked in the gas oven at number 6 for 20 minutes, I drizzled a bit of garlic and chili olive oil over to serve.

What would have been extra nice to finish it off with would have been some tomatoes, but as there are none left in the larder, under the self-imposed rules I was not going to go out and buy any.

Once we had eaten the tart I remembered that I still had some frozen cherry tomato slices in the freezer for just such an occasion - typical to remember it too late, but maybe now I will remember to use them on something else.