For the first Martha Mondays of 2011 Brette of Martha & Me chose Hearty Onion Soup Gratin from the January 2011 issue of Martha.
Despite only requiring one saucepan – which is a miracle for a Martha recipe (although I am not quite sure if I should have used two) this recipe was expensive for me to make. Beef stock cost £2.50 a pot and I required two pots and then Gruyere cheese worked out far too expensive so I opted to use a cheaper version. My year of frugal living has started!
However, this soup is wonderful. I enjoyed looking after the onions cooking down slowly and managed to read the magazine at the same time – a bonus when I seem be spending all my time chasing the minutes.
I could have eaten the onions on their own – the smell with the thyme was lovely!
I used a loaf of bread that we already had at home for the cheese bread on top. I made the whole recipe as directed and it served two of us for our dinner. There would have been fights if I had needed to divide it further!
I will certainly make this again however as the main course for dinner. It was pretty healthy (except the cheese and bread) and had a good amount of taste and we really enjoyed it.
Thanks for a wonderful pick Brette. Here’s to great picks all year long.
I liked it too. I think I stretched mine further by using more broth than the recipe called for. There’s something so hearty about soup on a cold night.
I used cheaper beef-flavored broth rather than true beef stock. I imagine beef stock must’ve made it taste incredibly luxurious. This was yummy, wasn’t it?
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