slow-cooked onion and cider soup with gruyere toasts and roast chicken

Having had a good dump of snow after Christmas, and enjoyed the first good summer for what seems like years, 2013 looks like delivering the full monty as autumn seems to be developing in some style: Warm, sunny but with a little edge in the air and a tang of wood smoke on the breeze. In fact, what better way to spend a sunny afternoon (whilst Ana is getting her hair styled), than kicking around the golden leaves by Barnes pond looking for conkers?

The obvious answer is ‘getting our arses back home to start cooking Sunday lunch for the impending arrival of guests’, but as ever we spurn the sensible option and fill up our bags with conkers, thus allowing the minimum time possible to make a two-course lunch for four adults and three children.

The usual complexities of turning out a roast, on time, at the same time, are further banjaxed by the mysterious disappearance of the potato peeler. Still, a mere two hours later than planned, we’ve got an experimental cider onion soup:

Followed by a roast with cauliflower cheese, roast potatoes, carrots (slightly under done), roast golden beetroot and over-tired, hyper-active children, who finish the evening sat in their pants in the bath.

Still, it’s not as late as my famed New Year’s Eve meal of 2000, which due to a combination of not allowing for the size of the oven and being drunk, saw a gap of six hours between a starter of stuffed squash & gruyere soup at 19.30 and a main meal being ready at 02.30.  Ana, Kendra, Greg, Amanda, Bill, Nicky, Ellie and Rob know what I'm talking about...

sources
slow-cooked onion and cider soup with gruyere toasts - Delicious, November 2009, p86