Oui Love Soup!

In honor of it being National Soup Month, we rounded up a list of the soups that we've featured on the blog thus far.  So if you're experiencing some frigid weather like we are, you can opt for the warm soups.  And if you're lucky enough to be in a warmer climate, you can go for the cold soups.  Something for everyone!

Hot soups to warm you up...

* Butternut Squash Soup

* Tomato Soup

* Sizzling Rice Soup

Cold soups to cool you down...

* Chilled Pea Soup

* Gazpacho

And if those aren't enough, we're coming at ya with a hearty French onion soup to get through these winter months.  This recipe came from our friends at WellFed Hospitality Group when we attended their first Feastly dinner, a meal paying homage to Julia Child. (you can read about another Feastly meal here)

You'll want to start by thinly slicing 10 onions.  Our onions were quite large, so we only used 8.

While you're slicing your onions, you can crisp up about 1/4 cup of bacon.  Once they've crisped up, add your onions to the pot, along with about half a stick of butter.

As you can see, our stock pot was overflowing with onions.  From this stage, it will take a good 45 minutes for your onions to cook down and caramelize.  As best you can, try to toss your onions around so they all get coated in butter, and cook through.  As they cook down, they'll release a lot of water, which needs to evaporate before your onions can really caramelize.

As you can see, they cook down quite a bit, and turn a nice golden brown color.  At this point you can deglaze your pot.  The recipe calls for a splash of brandy and some white wine, but we didn't have any on hand.  Instead, we used some Boatswain Chocolate Stout that we had on hand.  The beauty of this beer is that for just $1.99, you get a 22oz. bottle of pretty decent beer.

Once you've deglazed your pot, add in 2 quarts of beef stock and some thyme.  To help give it a richer flavor, we also used some veal demi glace.  Let this simmer and reduce for about 20 minutes.

One of my favorite things about French onion soup is the bubbly covering of cheese that covers the bowl.  Since we don't own any of the little crocks like restaurants have, we had to improvise.  We picked up a nice loaf of French bread and toasted some slices, each topped with a little pile of gruyere cheese.  Once the cheese had melted, they were nice little croutons to float on top of our soups.  We also sprinkled some cheese directly into the soup and let it melt in.

Although caramelizing onions takes a while, the end product is well worth it.  You're entire house/apartment will end up smelling like caramelized onions (even my bath towel picked up the scent!), but it's a delicious, hearty soup that will get you through the cold winter months.

This is How We Casserole!

One of my favorite Thanksgiving dishes is green bean casserole, so when Justin and I were developing this year's menu, I was pretty adamant about including it.  Turns out it's really easy to make a dressed up version of the traditional dish.  We used this recipe as a guide, and were on our way!

Instead of using the standard, canned fried onions, we decided to fry up some shallots.  We thinly sliced 4 shallots (which you can do ahead of time, though it made our fridge smell like onions), and they were ready to be fried.  The beauty here is that you don't need to make a batter or coat them in flour.  Just heat a pan with some oil, and drop the shallots in.  Be careful not to drop too many shallots in the pan at once.  They crisp up pretty fast, and you want to be able to pull them all out before they burn.  Once your shallots are fried, you can set them aside while you cook up the rest of the dish.

Bring a big pot of water to a boil, and drop in your green beans or hericot verts, just to blanche them.  Make sure you have an ice water bath ready, so as soon as you drain your beans, dump them into the ice bath to stop the cooking process.

While that's happening, you can whip up your creamy mushroom sauce.  You want about 3/4 lb. of mushrooms.  Just get whatever kind of mushrooms you like, and slice them into bite sized pieces.  For our casserole, we went with shiitakes.  Melt some butter in your pan, and saute your mushrooms.

When you first drop your mushrooms into the pan, season them with pepper.  You'll see the mushrooms first release their liquid, and then reabsorb them.  When they've reabsorbed them, that's when you season them with salt.

Once they cook down, you'll sprinkle them with a couple tablespoons of flour.  Toss them around so the mushrooms are coated.  The flour will start to form a bit of a paste, but this will help to thicken your sauce.  Once the flour has cooked down a bit, add in your vegetable or chicken stock and some heavy cream.  You want a 3 to 1 ratio of stock to cream, so depending on just how saucy you want your casserole to be, you can adjust accordingly.  I don't like my beans to be swimming in sauce, so we stuck with 1 1/2 cups of stock, and 1/2 cup of heavy cream.  This was the perfect amount of sauce for about 1 1/2 lbs. of beans.

Stir everything together and let it simmer until it thickens.  Once your sauce has thickened, you can toss in your beans.  You want to make sure they get evenly coated in the sauce.

Then pour everything into your baking dish.  Make sure you transfer all of the sauce into your dish too.  Top it all with your fried onions, and pop it into the oven for about 15 minutes.

You want the green beans to heat up again, the sauce to be bubbling, and the onions to really crisp up again.  This from-scratch version of green bean casserole doesn't require much more effort than the traditional dish, plus it's a bit healthier since you know exactly what's going into it.  You can pick your mushrooms, and you're not getting all that extra salt or preservatives from the canned mushroom soup and fried onions.  Not to mention, it tastes extremely delicious!