Golden Onion Soup with Sesame Puffs

First, my apologies posting a soup recipe for those of you melting in the summer heat but I live in Ireland. 'Nuff said. ;-) Ah well, you can bookmark this and make it on a cooler autumnal evening and you should as it's really, really good. I got the recipe from one of my BBC Good Food Vegetarian Christmas magazines that I always would buy back in London.

This one was essentially vegan, just needed vegan marg in place of butter and dairy free milk to brush on the puff pastry. I otherwise followed the recipe as was and found it needed no changes. It's a really beautiful soup with sweet tender onions and those sesame puffs go so well with it! Think I'll be making those again and again for other soups too. Or just to snack on, as they are seriously that good :-)

As for the onions I was very lucky to receive some very large, fresh yellow and red onions from my in-laws garden - they were just dug up the day before I made this, so mine were really fresh and I'm thinking they didn't get as golden as they should have. The photo in the magazine for example is a dark brown a la French Onion soup. Regardless of the onions you use just cook them down till really soft and as golden as they can get without falling apart. Oh, and the chives are fresh from their garden too! :-)

Golden Onion Soup with Sesame Puffs - serves 3 as a main, 4 - 6 as a starter
25g vegan margarine
2 large mild onions, sliced thin
1 large red onion, sliced thin - my combined onion weight was 700g once sliced
1 tsp sugar
1 Tbsp wholegrain mustard
4 Tbsp dry sherry*
1.5 pints vegetable stock, I made mine with 3 vegetable oxo cubes
chopped fresh chives - optional
Sesame Puffs:
100g ready rolled puff pastry
some dairy free milk
about 1 - 2 Tbsp sesame seeds

Melt the margarine in a large saucepan and add the onions and sugar. Stir well cover and gently cook for between 20 - 25 minutes or until very soft and deeply golden in colour. Stir in the sherry and mustard and simmer for 3 minutes to reduce the sherry. Add the stock, bring to a boil, reduce heat, cover and simmer for 15 minutes.

While it's simmering, preheat the oven to 220C or fan 210C and line a baking sheet with baking paper or foil. Unroll the puff pastry, cut into a strip and then into squares, or whatever shape you like! If doing squares just dip the whole square into some dairy free milk then dip into sesame seeds, coating both sides. Pop in the oven for about 7 - 12 minutes or until puffed up and golden. Spoon the soup into bowls, sprinkle with chopped fresh chives and 4 of the sesame puffs.

Original recipe had the sesame puffs in diamond shapes which I did at first. Just as yummy but I prefer the convenience of the crouton size puffs. Up to you!

* as for the sherry,  I had a terrible time searching online for sherry's that are vegan. Eventually I found this link which says that Harvey's Bristol Cream Sherry is vegan and is apparently in the Animal Free Shopper book, so, there you go. Was very happy this one is vegan as I never buy sherry and my inlaws next door just happened to have a bottle :-)

Nutritional Information: based on a serving of 3 as a main dish.
Calories: 353
Protein: 4.6g
Fat: 15.5g
Sat Fat: 6g
Fibre: 4.1g
Carbs: 37.9g
Sugar: 11.8g
Sodium: 1243mg

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