Making Lemons out of Lemonade

So every night, at the end of dinner service, my restaurant is one of the few that I have worked in that participates in a restaurant tradition called family meal. We provide a meal at the end of the night for those that have worked so hard for us, while using up product that otherwise would go to waste. You do it at home too; it's called using leftovers. This is a key example: at the end of a night, when our roasted vialea onion dish did not sell too well, (we cook in small daily batches on a lot of our items), I took our leftover onions, and pieces of filet that were beyond too small to create a portion with worthy of selling, and made a classic dish, with a Spanish twist........I do work in a Spanish restaurant after all.





"Spanish Onion Soup"


serves 4-8






Ingredients:
1-1.5 vidalea onions, sliced & roasted
8 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed
6 carrots, peeled and roughly chopped
2 handfuls button mushrooms, halved
white wine
beef scrap
1 liter water
2C chicken broth
8 pieces bread, grilled
4 slices manchego cheese, sliced in half
S&P to taste
2 tbl smoked sweet paprika

Directions:
In a pot, add enough oil to cover the bottom of the pan. Add garlic, mushrooms and carrots and saute on medium high head until the garlic becomes translucent and soft. Season with salt, pepper, and smoked sweet paprika. Turn up heat to high and add beef scrap. Allow beef to brown slightly and deglaze with a splash of white wine, chicken broth, and water. Allow
water to come to a boil, lower the heat to medium high, add the roasted onions and let reduce by half in volume. Adjust seasoning as needed.

With the grilled bread, place a piece of manchego cheese on each slice and pop in the oven(400F) until cheese is melted. To serve, place soup in a bowl and cover with cheesy bread.

So basically french onion soup is beef broth, with a ton of onions and a crouton with some type of swiss cheese (usually Gruyere). What did I do different? How did I make it Spanish? Outside of adding a more produce, the Spanish twist was the use of paprika and manchego cheese.

In the end, the point is to make use of what you have.