Week 25 – French Onion Soup with Gruyere Croutons, Beef Bourguignon and Crème Caramel

One of the my friends had suggested doing a Come Dine With Me style set of dinner parties, and I hosted mine last Wednesday. In order to get some form of inspiration, I was flicking through a new recipe book (Jamie Does), and spotted a Crème Caramel recipe. It reminded me that there were a few recipes that I wanted to try out in order to recreate some of the delicious meals I’d eaten in Paris last month, so I decided upon a French themed menu for my party, and then chose to make 3 recipes I’d never tried out before!

My starter was French Onion Soup, sometimes I’d had most night on holiday. I managed to find a recipe in a Soup recipe book I have, and thought I’d bought all the ingredients. However, on Wednesday I discovered half way through that I’d forgotten some Sherry vinegar, so ended up finding a second recipe on the Internet and combining the two! The key seemed to be cooking the onion in olive oil and butter for as long as possible so that they were soft and creamy. And overall, the soup was relatively easy to make. I also made my own croutons for the soup by toasting some baguette slices in oil and garlic. Finally once my guests had arrived, I added the croutons to the soup, grated some Gruyere cheese on top and grilled under the cheese was bubbling. My two guests both finished their bowls, and seemed to enjoy it!

My main course was beef bourguignon and I found a recipe for the beef on the Internet, courtesy of Delia Smith. I’d had this a couple of times in Paris, and really liked how winey it was. This was another slow cooker job – I popped some onions, shallots, garlic, bay leaves, pancetta, beef, flour, thyme and a bottle of Bordeaux in the slow cooker in the morning before work and then came home to some delicious smells, and everything bubbling away nicely. I served this with some cheddar mash, and it seemed to go down very well with the guests – particularly Andrew, who had a second plateful!

Finally came my desert, which I’d been panicking about all day. I’d made this on the Tuesday evening so that it had plenty of time to set. It felt quite a challenging recipe. I hadn’t made caramel before, so I was a bit worried about that. As it was cooking I wasn’t completely confident what it was meant to look like, but when I thought it was ready I poured it into some ramekins. I then made my custardy mixture, again something completely new, but it seemed to taste ok as I poured it on top of the caramel. The ramekins were placed in the oven in a ban marie and on a low temperature, and once cooled popped in the fridge. When the time came to serve the desert I was very worried that they weren’t going to come out of the ramekins – however once the first one had came out onto the plate looking as it should I relaxed a little, and again my guests all seemed to enjoy them.

I was really pleased with these three recipes overall, and I felt they made a nice French themed meal. It was challenging doing 3 new recipes at once, but at least it has got me back up to date, with 25 new recipes this year so far!