[Sca-cooks] Re: [Sca-cooks) onion soup..and the feast experience (long)

[Jane Boyko]

This soup has made it into my regular "hearty soup to serve on a cold weekend" 
repertoire for my husband and myself.

Onion-Pea Soup (serves 10) (Early French Cookery p 104)

First you need to make a pea puree.  (see p. 63 of EFC)

Since I really do not like pea soup or white peas I now choose to make the pea 
puree with split green peas.  The white peas provide a different flavour and 
appearance.  

1 c. split green peas (or white peas)
2 c. water.

Cook peas until they are mushy. Drain.  Mash with a pototo masher (I didn't 
have a food processor at this point and the masher worked for me) or puree 
until smooth with a food processor.  The masher allows some of the peas to 
maintain their shape which I find provides more texture while eating.  You 
should be left with 2 cups of pea puree.

For the soup.

1 lb onions - about 4 large cooking onions (thinley sliced and chopped into 
bite size pieces)
1/8 c to 1/4 c of butter 
6-8 c water with vegetable boullion
2 c pea puree
1/2 c chopped flat-leaved parsley
salt and pepper to taste
3 tbsp white wine vinegar

Place water and boullion in pot on stove and heat to boiling.  Add pea puree.  
Meanwhile saute the onions until 1/2 of them are carmelized.  Dump onions and 
juices into soup pot.  Simmer for 1/2 hour.  Add parsley, wine vinegar, salt 
and pepper and cook for an additional 15 minutes to meld the flavours 
togther.

Serve with a crusty roll or slice of bread.

Notes:  

I have found that bite size pieces work better as sometimes the longer slices 
leap off of spoons and splash back into the soup or the longer slices manage 
to adhere themselves to cheeks etc.

Scully recommends lemon juice or white wine vinegar.   I tried both and found 
the wine vinegar to sharpen the flavours better then the lemon juice.   I 
enjoy the flavour some much that I occassionaly am known to add ww vinegar 
into other soups at home I am experimenting with. 

You will also notice the butter flavour.  Since I am lactose intolerant I have 
been experimenting with olive and vegetable oil, and bacon fat, but the soup 
loses some of its' intense flavour. I use between 6-8 tbsps of oil.  I have 
never measured the bacon fat.  So far I prefer the bacon fat as it gives a 
stronger flavour which is comparable to the richness of the butter.

I have also added minced garlic (1/2 large head) to the onions as they saute 
for a different flavour.

Marina

On 02/10/04 09:15 am, Elaine Koogler wrote:
> Marina wrote:
> >As to onion soup.  I too have a favourite recipe from Sculley's "Early
> > French Cookery" p 104  called Onion-Pea soup.  I get requests for this
> > soup on a regular basis to the point I am pointing out to people that
> > there are other great onion soup recipes and just soup recipes that they
> > may be interested in having.  If you want I will be happy to post the
> > recipe.
>
> Of course we want the recipe.  Even though we may have the book in
> question, we may not have found this particular one....or we may not
> have redacted it...or we'd like to see how someone else redacted it!  So
> we're almost always interested in seeing recipes (we, as in the denizens
> of this list).
>
> Kiri  ;-)
>
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