Giada's Onion Soup...

On Sunday afternoon we were watching "Everyday Italian" with Giada-- the episode was the "best of GDL Foods" and included reciepes from her days as a personal chef. While the Husband was horrified by the sandwich cookies that required three whole sticks of butter, we were both intrigued by Giada's onion soup. It seemed easy enough to make-- sautee thinly sliced onions, a tablespoon of fresh thyme, some salt, some pepper and 4 cups of beef stock. Serve with a piece of chunky bread (with some fontina melted on top)... I made french onion soup a few weeks ago, but I thought I would go ahead and try Giada's version. I picked up the needed goodies at Wegmans and when I got home tried it out. I used one and a half really big sweet onions-- sauteed in a bit of olive oil and butter--- don't tell the Husband!, one box of beef broth, one tablespoon of chopped fresh thyme, a dash of salt and a dash of pepper. Unfortunately, I left the stove for a few minutes too long while the onions were sauteeing and they got a bit stuck to the bottom of our stock pot, but as I said to the Husband-- that's what wine is for! I deglazed the bottom of the pot with a bit of marsala wine and then added the beef broth. All in all the soup was very easy and very tasty (and I was also very excited that I was able to use the broiler to melt our fontina while at the same time baking brownies in our top oven and *not* blow a fuse!)

For next time I would recommend trying a mix of fontina and gruyere-- gruyere is a bit sharper, and the addition of the marsala wine was nice too. ps. the Brownies (straight from the Duncan Hines box) were tasty too!