This hearty soup is based on roasting onions rather than pan- frying, so the oven does most of the work. Serve topped with cream and crisp bacon, with grilled sourdough or warm flat bread.


Ingredients
Feeds 4. Takes 1½ hours.

4 white onions
4 garlic cloves
1tbsp olive oil
4 rashers streaky bacon
1 litre chicken stock
½tsp ground cumin
Pinch of ground nutmeg
Sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper
2tbsp whipping cream
1tsp thyme leaves

Heat the oven to 200C/Gas mark 6. Peel the onions and cut a deep cross about halfway through each one. Arrange in a roasting tray with the unpeeled garlic cloves. Drizzle with olive oil and toss well, then bake for one hour until soft. Arrange the bacon on top for the last ten or 15 minutes of baking, then set the crisped bacon aside.

Remove the onion skins and place the flesh in a saucepan, freeing the onion leaves from each other. Squeeze the garlic cloves, adding the softened garlic to the onions and discarding the skins.

Add chicken stock, cumin, nutmeg, sea salt and pepper, and bring to the boil, stirring. Reduce the heat and let it simmer for 15 minutes. Transfer to a food processor and whizz to a purée. Return the soup to the pan and reheat.

Whisk the cream to a soft peak and crumble the bacon into shards.

Ladle the soup into four warmed soup bowls, top with a dollop of whipped cream and scatter with crumbled bacon and thyme leaves.

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