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French onion soup is one of the great pleasures of my life; rich beefy broth, sweet soft onions, buttery bread, and gooey crusty cheese, Really, how could you not like this? It is ultimate comfort food, if you can get someone else to make it for you that is. Because if you want to make this for yourself to comfort you on a cold night or after a long day, by the time this recipe is ready you will have forgotten why you wanted to make it for yourself in the first place. Don’t let that scare you away though. All I am saying really is that this recipe requires some planning and forethought. If you can muster that up, this soup is totally worth the effort and you will be so pleased with yourself as soon as you taste that first spoonful.

This recipe comes from my good friend Tommy; that would be Thomas Keller to you all. Okay, he’s not really my friend, but this is my blog and that means that I can type anything I want and pass it off as truth. So, in imafoodblog land Tommy Keller is our friend.

I have owned the Bouchon cookbook by Thomas Keller for quite a while but Nick and I have only cooked one or two recipes from it. His recipes are not very figure friendly so I don’t have too many occasions to use the book. And when I volunteered to host Recipes to Rival for October, I did not have a particular recipe in mind. Though I had been thinking about making some real French onion soup for a few weeks, and that seemed like a perfect fall weather R2R challenge.

Bouchon and the accompanying Bouchon Cookbook features French bistro food. I don’t think you can get more French bistro than onion soup, and I know that Thomas Keller does not do anything half-assed. So I figured his recipe for onion soup would be delicious and authentic, which is exactly what I wanted to accomplish with my first attempt at this soup.

I made this soup twice. The first attempt came out wonderfully. However, I knew I could do better. The first time I made this I did not read ahead enough to see that Keller calls for homemade beef stock in his recipe and pretty much says that he would rather you use water than substitute canned stock for the homemade stuff. I was worried if I used only water the broth would not be rich enough, so I met Tommy halfway and used half water and half store bought stock. I think this compromise produced a very good end result, and I would make it this way again for sure.

But I kept thinking about the homemade beef stock. I had never made my own before, we have made plenty of chicken stock in our little kitchen, but never beef stock. So I decided that I had to make it again and go all out and make Keller’s homemade beef stock as well. I got myself some meaty leg bones from my butcher and made my very first homemade beef stock. It came out great! The aroma that wafted through our apartment as it simmered for 6 hours let me know that canned beef broth should not even be in the same category as the real stuff. The smell was amazing. I definitely won’t make it every time I need beef stock, but I will whenever beef stock will be one of the main flavors in my dish, like this soup!

The second batch of soup with the homemade stock was AMAZING. Right now it is Sunday and I finished the soup today and had a taste so I could write about it. It had a depth of flavor that the first batch lacked. I am “aging” the finished soup in the fridge until Tuesday since Keller says it gets even better if left to sit for a day or so. I did this so I could get the total full effect of what Keller expects this soup to be, and also for scheduling reasons I need a dinner on Tuesday that I can pull together really quickly. I will update the post once I have a full bowl with cheese and all. I know it’s going to be great though! I am excited to eat it.

The recipe for both the beef stock and the onion soup are after the jump, along with some process photos. Take a deep breath and tell yourself it will be worth it in the end, because this is a long one folks. It is truly not complicated, but I am not going to lie and say it’s a cinch to make. It requires some effort, tender love and care, but you will be rewarded in the end.

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Bruschetta has been around for a long time, like 15th century long time. It originated, of course, somewhere in central Italy. The word bruschetta is derived from the word brucare which is of Roman dialect and means “to roast over the coals". (Thanks Wikipedia). I think a lot of people assume that bruschetta refers to the delicious topping on this Italian snack, but it in fact refers to the grilled bread.

It seems to me that the most traditional type of bruschetta is topped with a raw tomato and basil combination. Since Nick and I both do not like raw tomatoes this is not something that we would normally eat. However, since bruschetta was July’s Recipe to Rival challenge, and it is easy and inexpensive to make, I figured we may as well try this recipe out.

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Did you know that chickpeas were one of the earliest cultivated vegetables? Like 7500 years ago. That would be 5491 BC. That is a long f’ing time ago.

However, the ladies over at Recipes to Rival told me that this month I would be deep frying chickpeas. Falafel and chickpea fries. Okay, twist my arm.

I generally try to avoid fried foods. I like to save my fried food intake for particular things that I know I love and will be worth the fat and possible belly ache that I get from too much fried stuff. A fried fish sandwich from a stand near Nick’s childhood home in PA, homemade French fries, good tempura, or fresh yeast doughnuts are all evil temptresses to me. I usually give in to them.

I debated baking these falafel and chickpea fries, but decided to just do it up right and deep fry. It had been a while since we deep fried anything anyway.

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This was my first attempt at Coq au Vin, and quite honestly, it may have been the first time I have eaten Coq au Vin. I cannot recall ever ordering it in a restaurant. This was a recipe from Anthony Bourdain’s Les Halles Cookbook: Strategies, Recipes, and Techniques of Classic Bistro Cooking and it was April’s Recipes to Rival pick by Temperance of High on the Hog.

Here is my opinion of this dish: meh (I may or may not have stolen that word from Nick at Macheesmo).

Here is why I think I thought this dish was “meh":

1. I did not use bacon and I reduced the amount of butter.
2. I used frozen pearl onions instead of fresh, and I was unhappy with their final flavor. I was lazy.
3. I should have also added some stock to the cooking liquid, instead of only wine for a more diverse flavor.
4. I may have actually overcooked the chicken a little.
5. You know some days you start cooking and then you think to yourself “man, I just really don’t feel like cooking today". Well that is kind of how I felt when I was cooking this. And the process just dragged on and I just wanted to be done already. So I may have been a little inclined to not love this since I was kind of mad at it. (Yes, I was mad at my food. It is a growing trend for me).

Nick liked this, but I was underwhelmed. Granted I left out the bacon and reduced the amount of butter since this was a weeknight meal, so it could have been my fault. However, Nick and I often half joke that adding butter and bacon is like cheating in cooking, because a dish can’t really be bad if there is enough butter and/or bacon. We could all be “iron chefs” with a little bit of creativity and a ton of various pork and butter fats. So I was hoping that this dish would still perform well minus the extra fat. The taste was good, but it wasn’t unbelievable. Apparently, bacon is large part of the flavor profile of a Coq au Vin, so next time I would not forgo it.

Here is the original recipe if you would like to give it a try. I don’t know how this recipe compares to other Coq au Vin recipes because I was a bad food blogger and did not do any research. I would like to try some other recipes as I know that people don’t rave about Coq au Vin for nothing.

Here is my chicken marinating overnight in a mixture of wine, onion, carrot, celery, cloves, peppercorns and thyme.

The next day, after a searing, though you can’t really tell becasue the stain of the wine hides the yummy browning:

Coq au Vin, simmering away:

This picture is creeping me out a little for some reason. It looks like a chicken graveyard.

Chicken thigh, served with some tri colored pasta. I love these colored pastas.

Making ricotta cheese is the topic of this month’s Recipes to Rival, which was chosen by Lauren of I’ll Eat You. This was a great choice by Lauren and I hope it inspires more people to experiment further with cheese making.

Ricotta literally translates to “cooked twice” and it refers to the fact that ricotta cheese is made by recooking the whey from a cheese curd, usually mozzarella. The R2R recipe that Lauren provided was not this complex and called for essentially making an acid set curd by cooking milk and buttermilk until the curds separate. However, Nick has some experience making mozzarella curd, so we were inspired by this challenge to make some true blue homemade ricotta cheese. To do this, you first have to make the mozzarella curd.

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