First, Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday with lots of fun and family and great food.

And speaking of food :) When was the last time you enjoyed a bowl of French Onion Soup? If you're like me ... it's been a while!

I'm old enough to remember when French Onion Soup was considered "gourmet food" and was a required item on the menu of every fine restaurant. But then it fell out of favour. Became dated and old-school. But I'm starting to see it pop up here and there again so perhaps, like many things, it's come back in style. (I'm old enough to remember hot pants too, but let's hope they never come back!)

It wasn't until my daughter tried it at a restaurant recently that I had given French Onion Soup much of a thought. She was smitten and has been begging every night of the week encouraging me to make it for her ever since.

In search of a recipe, I found there are endless variations. Some contain beef broth, some chicken and some more with a combination of both. Some contain add-ins like garlic, brandy, sherry, red or white wine, herbs and more. Some use Swiss cheese or emmenthal, others Gruyere. I settled on a simple, classic recipe from Fine Cooking.

Of course, the first challenge was figuring out how I was going to survive cutting 4 cups of onions (goggles?!). In truth, it wasn't that bad and the soup actually came together very quickly once the passive cooking time of sweating the onions was done. I think that qualifies it as a reasonably quick weeknight dinner option and I'll certainly be putting it into the dinner rotation.

Here is my adaptation of the original recipe. It was fabulous!! Just simply wonderful and everything a French Onion Soup should be - comforting, hearty and cheesy. I made a small-ish batch. It was just enough for 4 bowls. If you're feeding more, just double the recipe (and my thoughts are with you having to cut 8 cups of onions :)