How to Cook a la Bonne Femme Simple, Honest French Home Cooking

Welcome back to the channel everybody. So today we're going to be learning how to transform simple vegetables into a classic french soup that is called the soup bonfarm. Now the name bonfarm of course is going to look odd so I cannot just start the recipe without telling you the explanation. So the name soup you know bonfarm it's an old name from the old days that refers to a wife. So when you say my bonfarm back in the days you used to refer to my wife. So you could see that recipe called my wife's soup recipe. In the wider context of french cooking what it really means when you see bonfarm it means that it is a home style of dish. All right it's very very simple but there's always a little tweak in the french recipe and what we're going to discover is how to make that soup looking very good with very little work. Let's go. Now this particular soup is part of a category that is called the clear soups compared to their counterparts the pureed soup they are not mixed with a stick blender. So why is this important is that when you serve it all the vegetable cuts that you will have done are going to be visible. Now if you have things that are all kinds of size big chunks large chunks you know rough cuts and everything it's going to look pretty ugly. In french cooking we're quite conscious with that kind of thing so because of that we're going to try to use these classic vegetable cuts without using too much fuss to have something that is nice and elegant. So I'm going to go through the vegetables very quickly see how to cut them. Now if you're looking at some practice with your knife skill this is great because it's not complicated and it's quite useful anytime you make that soup. So the beans they're not very good looking and from the fish have been staying here for a few days so I'm of course rinse them and clean them under running water. We're just cutting the ugly bits on the side here do the same on here and we need small cuts because it's a soup that cooks 30 minutes maximum but instead of just cutting your beans like this in little pieces we try to go on an angle this time. Okay so you can do you make some these little efforts okay and I'm just showing you three beans here but we're just going to try to get a little bit more interesting. So it's home style but you see that your diamond shape and the little oblique is a bit better. So all the beans like that. Next on the line the leeks. The leeks are always the same we only use the yellow part you remove the outer leaf okay and then you do a cross cut on the leek. So when it's whole like this you got one way like this you turn another way and you got this kind of shape like this. I like this tool. It's like pages of a book and you rinse this under cold water like this to make sure there's no dirt anyway because they're you know they are known to have dirt between the leaves and when it's here basically nothing special for the leeks when they're like this thin slices so nothing nothing special but you go around okay something like that it's fine so all the leeks cut like that. And now the carrots. Carrots and potatoes can be cut into something that's called the paysan cut it means the farmer's cut. Okay so when you get your carrot up you're gonna trim one end you're gonna trim the other here and then you can cut your your carrot let's say in two pieces. It's very small carrots but typically the paysan cut you take one thing like this okay we're gonna do gently one half like that then you cut in half again okay then you turn with these little two buttons and you don't care from here same thing thin and you're gonna have these little these kind of fan shapes that we have so they're more fun you know when you're gonna have this on your plate then they're rather rough chop so all the carrots like that. Now the potatoes they have to be cut in small cubes you can do it with the knife if you have only a few potatoes but if you want to make that soup for more people it can get a little bit tedious because you need to cut the end here the sides make it rectangular cut slices then transform the slice into matchstick and then the matchstick into cubes which is a bit long we need so there's one little trick that I'm using here let me show you. Let me present you my humble fry cutter you see these little squares in here that is the shape that we want and guess what it is all I need to make my little cube so what I'm doing I've got my little fry cutter in here I'm planting my potato on here something like that I'm taking my thing on here it's a manual thing and then up and then I'm done are you making fries is that it yes I am you can use this for fries but the most important I've skipped all of the steps and I already have my little buttons that are perfectly squared and because it's home cooking we do a simple bonfire style I'm just going to go with my knife and I'm gonna go chopping away and I'm gonna have my little cubes okay this is my little trick to accelerate the process look at these little neat little things done all done would you look at this mise en place and this is why the vegetable cuts in french cooking are important in a case such as this that the ingredients has to be shown on the plate then you need to pay attention to their cuts there's nothing complicated but look at this we've got little oblique on here we've got a thinly sliced leak on here with your cubes of potatoes with the fan shaped carrots and the rest is just the whole beans because it's the bonfire appellation it's a homestyle appellation I also took some liberty to add something else wine yes a little bit of white wine in there to add some flavors I'm going to be using a mix of stock and water if you want you can use only water if you don't have this kind of liquid stock you can also use a stock cube with the water but make sure the stock cube is not full of salt because sometimes there's way too much added for the rest really when you use a small stock pot or a large saucepan some butter and we're good to go so it's going to stove let's begin we start with the butter and let me tell you that really once you've cut the vegetables are you pretty much done the rest is extremely straightforward we're going to melt the butter first looking good we've got the butter and I'm going to start here first with the leeks and the carrots oh grab the carrots on here and it's always the action of sweating the vegetables so you want a medium heat and a good two or three minutes to start release the natural water contained in the vegetables and make them a little bit translucent well it's not the carrots but the leeks very nice you can see the volume has gone down and now you're going to really rinse and drain the potatoes and now we're going to add all the potato cubes so you don't use the water from the potatoes you drain the water out and then you mix that in after one minute we're ready to moisten the mixture so one thing to keep in mind is that the original recipe is made with water but really when you only have vegetables and there's no secret the taste you're going to get in here is not going to fall from the sky okay so having a little broth like this really enhance the flavor for sure if you want you can use only water but I'm going to use a mix of both okay so typically with about a liter or four cups you're done but of course some wine just a dash and then some aromatics now we're going to add some thyme so if you would choose three branch or two branches enough a bit of bay leaf in here and I'm going to leave this to simmer first for 10 minutes before adding the green beans and the other beans in okay so timer on and we go for 10 minutes and while the soup is cooking it is the perfect time to talk about our upcoming course entitled soup du jour from broth to consommer it is a brand new adventure we're going to be discovering the world of soup as per auguste escoffier going through all the categories starting here with the classic potage de legume moving on to the pureed soup then the creme then the velouté and finally the consommer in each chapter we're discovering recipes that haven't been done for a very long time different flavor we're using fish we're using meat we're using combination of vegetable it's an absolute absolute unique course to come if you want to have a teaser you can join our patreon page that will give you access to our online community where we've posted the first chapter of the course that has 11 lessons when you're going to learn plenty of interesting stuff link in the video description and look forward for the announcements later on back to the soup you see perfect timing just the course there and we're adding the other beans in here and we're going to mix everything together and now we're going to keep on cooking and for it could be a good 20 minutes so really simmer slow cooking we want this flavor to be released otherwise it's not going to have much taste and trust me if you want to have more taste really use broth only even no water because i've tried this before with simple water it's a bit it's a bit thin now before you put your timer on and forget to say for this last 20 minutes lead on okay let's go the time is up i just reduce my heat to a simmer and this is the result we have look at this the vegetable cuts are very humble i remember it's a very humble soup and from here we're going to add the final touches in the form of the seasoning the seasoning you can add it before but typically with soup it's after so you can have a bit of salt you're going to have a bit of pepper and there is also an option for that soup to have cream into it and i think it is really in the the last moment this final touch is that the soup can go in different directions so if you want you can have it like this okay this is the clear version as you can see here you can serve it as is with some garnish or you can have it with cream so instead of put cream everywhere let me show you a second option so there's a normal version let me show you the cream version if you want something more indulgent a bit boku style you're going to take a few spoons of cream in here i'm going to go easy i like cream so this is one of my and you basically transform this into a cream soup we're going to bring this to a simmer again adjust the seasoning and it's going to be the creamy version so now let's serve and have a taste now if there is one thing i've learned from escoffier following in his steps on all these word of soup making is that the final touches and the garnish goes a very long way so first off in your soup when you have cream you need butter which i've added a teaspoon of butter in my soup and it needs to be really really hot so serving first you've got your soup bonfarm with cream a little bit of butter and it's served absolutely hot that's the first thing okay so we've got the base let's have a look not bad nice coloring appetizing what if we add some freshness into it a bit of parsley from the garden freshly picked and that's going to add a boost of flavor really very nice i like it if you're not vegetarian what about adding some pieces of smoked bacon even better nice so i say look at that bacon cream parsley and a final touch of course and because we're french we could not go without with a few croutons in my soup that is what i'm talking about and now your soup is ready all right so you see the soup bonfarm is really a base a simple clear soup that you can eat on its own with nothing on it you can add cream and you can add all kinds of elements if you kind of look at the comparison from the basic one with just the broth to this kind of little interesting soup here it's a far departure so now i can finally enjoy the beautiful you can add some pepper if you want sorry for the vegetarian out there so you got these fresh vegetables i've got a piece of meat i've got some bread and the parsley so you know it's you know cream and butter for soup Escoffier is making it all the time the majority of his soups you finish with minimum butter and otherwise cream and butter and you kind of understand why because you know look at that i mean that's just a good soup i mean it's nourishing it's creamy it's crunchy but i think the bacon is nice he had kind of saltiness into it a bit of meatiness but uh maybe not for everybody love it what a simple but beautiful soup but that is the end of the video guys if you watch it till the end thank you very much and if you enjoy the video the content or if you heard about soup bonfarm let me know in the comment section next time i think i'm gonna do something for a side dish also using leeks because i think leeks are really some kind of an underrated vegetable and i've got something really really nice that you can serve as a side specifically with fish or more precisely salmon so if you want to join me next time i'm going to discover that little simple recipe to add some flavor to yourself