French Onion Soup + Pan Fried Asparagus Spears

Man, I love French Onion Soup!

I love the bread and cheese that are so beautifully melted together, browned on the top.  As you break into the crusty, browned cheese and bread, underneath is a wonderful rich broth. It's so deeply flavored and fragrant with caramelized onions.  *drool* SO, I had to make some...

Here's the before going into the oven picture...

 And after!!

Yum!  I used the recipe from smitten kitchen, another one of the blogs I really like.  She's very popular too.  You can check out the recipe and her blog here. It is a lot of time, but the end result is SO WORTH IT!  I actually made French onion soup once before.  I used a Julia Child recipe (also posted on another blog, don't know if I can find it) but it took a good few hours.  I do think that time makes a difference. The flavor of the soup was deeper, but if you want a nice do at home version, do the smitten kitchen one.

Yay OVEREXPOSED PICTURE!

Another overexposed picture!  I decided to pan fry some asparagus and to deglaze the pan I used red wine.  Yay, quick sauce.  It worked quite nicely.  The asparagus were crunchy and firm on the outside, relatively soft on the inside.  Here's the recipe for it, it's a great quick side:

Pan Fried Asparagus:
-about 1 lb of asparagus
-1 Tbsp olive oil
-Salt and pepper to season, but give it a good generous pinch of salt.
-1/4 cup red wine

1. Wash the asparagus.  Take one asparagus, and with your fingers break off the back end (not the tip).  This gives you a general idea where it's too tough to cook the asparagus.  So cut the rest of the asparagus at the same place.
2. Heat the olive oil on medium high in a medium to large skillet.  Once it gets close to smoking, put in the asparagus.  Give a good toss of salt and several cracks of fresh black pepper.
3. Wait for a few minutes and toss/flip over asparagus.  Once it starts getting burnt marks (like a grill) they are pretty much done.  Check for done-ness by eating one :D and add more salt and pepper if needed.
4. Remove the asparagus and take the red wine and pour it into the hot pan.  With a spatula, scrape the burnt bits at the bottom and reduce to about half over medium low heat.  Pour over asparagus and serve.

Hope you enjoyed this one! I'd love to hear from you! Thanks for stopping by.