My idea is to prepare a French style onion soup in a slightly different way. I wanted the taste to be truly unique, that's why the soup was made on home-made chicken broth, the same made by my mother and grandmother and very popular in Poland, the country I come from. The result of my work is an absolutely unique soup in taste, despite its simplicity.
List of ingredients:
Chicken broth: (ingredients for about 3l)
1 small yellow onion
1 parsley root
1 tblsp of flour
1/4 celery root
1 medium size cabbage leave
1/3 of leek
1 carrot
a few leaves of fresh fennel
salt and pepper
1 chicken leg (You can use wings instead or already preparet chicken portions for broth, which you can get in most of the shops in EU)
Soup:
0.5 kg of yellow onion
4 tblsp of butter
2 tblsp of olive oil
1.5 l of poultry broth
1 lemon
1 tsp of lemon zest
1 clove of garlic
0.1 kg of roquefort cheese
1 french baguette
Herbes de Provence (optionally)
thyme
salt and pepper
a handful of shredded cheddar or other "yellow cheese"
As first, wash all vegetables and meat, which you will use to cook chicken broth. Peel celery, parsley and onion. Peel carrot too and slice it. Put all veggies and meat in the pot and add water. Cook for about 1.5 h on very low heat, so you can see only small bubbles in broth. It is very important not to boil it, because it will become turbid and not so tasty. It must be transparent. When its done, remove all vegetables and meat.
Preheat the oven to 200 C for baguettes.
Let's start cooking soup! First, peel the onions, cut them in halves and slice them really thin. Then put olive oil and 2 tblsp of butter on a non-stick pan, add onion and literally a little, little water. Simmer it till it gets soft but not golden-brown! Then add flour and fry it till it turns slightly gold. After that put all onion in the pot and add 1.5 l of chicken stock. (You can eat the rest of chicken stock as a soup, just add noodles, cooked carrot and cabbage and serve very hot, its delicious!) Cook for about 20 min and then squeeze lemon in and add lemon zest. Take a glass of soup (without onions, just liquid), pour it in to the bowl and dip roquefort cheese inside. Wait about 2 min untill cheese starts to melt, then blend it and pour it back to the pot. Add salt, pepper and thyme. Herbs the Provence include thyme too, so you can add them too, if you prefer more distinctive herbs flavour in the soup.
Now melt 2 tblsp of butter and add chopped garlic and a pinch of thyme and optionally a little juice that could stay in a squeezed lemon. Mix everything together and rub baguette slices with it. Set them in the oven for about 3-4 minutes, untill they become crispy. Then put shredded cheese on a top and put baguette back in the oven untill cheese melts.
After that pour soup in the bowl and put toasts in to the soup! That's it! Bon appetit!