Roast Onion Soup with Thai Spices (RR 10).

A bit of cross-breeding in blog challenge world has resulted in Random Recipes Does No Croutons Required or No Croutons Required Does Random Recipes depending on which host you visit.  So this month we all have to make a soup randomly chosen from our recipes at home.  This challenge runs to the end of the month so plenty of time to join in for anyone who fancies a bowl of warming soup.  Just click on either of the links.  

I opted to use random.org to get a number then counted along my cookbooks and landed on Real Cooking by Nigel Slater.

  

Look how young Nigel looks there!

Anyway, I went to the index and found that there are 10 recipes listed under "soups" so I used the random number generator again and it chose Cream of Roast Onion Soup with Thai Spices.

Nigel calls it "Sweet, sour, hot and creamy.  A soup to invigorate".  I have to agree.  This was absolutely delicious.  Amazingly easy to put together and tasted like it took way more effort.  I love the Thai flavours here (I missed out the ginger) and thoroughly enjoyed it.  It's a funny soup - both comforting and warming, and also refreshing and zingy - really hots the spot.  Glad I made this recipe.

Recipe - adapted from Real Cooking by Nigel Slater.

Serves 4.

Ingredients - 

4 medium sized onions

4 plump cloves of garlic

1 L of vegetable stock

1 tbsp Thai fish sauce (Nam pla) - now this recipe is supposed to be vegetarian for the challenge so you can just miss out the Nam pla unless anyone has any great ideas for a vegetarian substitute for me?

2 small red chillies, seeded and chopped

400ml tin of coconut milk

Grated zest of 1 lime

Juice of 2 limes

Method - 

1. Cut the onions in half vertically, skin and all.  Place in a roasting tin and roast at 200C/GM6 for about 45 mins, turning once.

2. Add the whole garlic cloves after about 20 mins.

3. When the onions are golden and soft, peel off the skin and slice into big chunks - whatever you think you can eat without making too much mess!  Nigel doesn't slice his at all - just separates the layers but either my onions were too big for that or my mouth too small. 

4. Drop into a deep saucepan.  Add the roast garlic, squeezed from the skin, the stock, the fish sauce and chillies.

5. Bring to the boil, turn down the heat and simmer for about 20 minutes.

6. Stir in the coconut milk, bring back to simmering point, then taste for seasoning. Add salt or soy sauce if needed.  I added some of my posh soy sauce for the depth of flavour and a little sea salt for an extra kick of saltiness.  

7. Add the lime zest and juice just before serving.