Jamie Oliver’s English Onion Soup With Sage And Cheddar

I don’t usually blog about cooking at home, but lately I’ve been trying to eat better and spend less, and also this recipe and Mr. Oliver himself are worth talking about.

Watching “Jamie at Home” on the Cooking Channel is great fun, even when you have no intention of making the dish he’s demonstrating. He’s always using his hands, making a huge mess and thoroughly enjoying himself. He also says the funniest things - “give it a wazz” being a personal favorite - which might just be funny to me because I’m not English, but he really is colorful with his language, and I feel like I learn a couple of new phrases every episode.

On this onion episode I was watching, while he was cooking balsamic-baked onions and potatoes with roast pork, he tossed onions and garlic into a pan, emphasizing the need to mix them well, followed by the phrase “how’s ya fatha?” … and then proceeded to explain the rest of the recipe. I was floored! This was the most obscurely placed phrase from him yet. I was so amused that I had to rewind my DVR to make sure I had heard him properly. I assumed that it referred to the garlic and onion mingling with each other, perhaps one asking the other how its father was doing. But I googled it just to make sure.

To my surprise and delight, the definition is actually a step beyond that. According to effingpot.com:

This is a very old term for sex which plays on our apparent British sensitivity. Rather than saying the actual “sex” word you could refer to having a bit of How’s your Father, instead - nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

Urban Dictionary:

Origin in World War II, English soldiers in France expected that an old French lady with grey hair, whom their father had bonked during the First World War might come up to them and ask this.

Took her round the bike shed for a bit of how’s-your-father

Of course I immediately told all my girlfriends about my new favorite phrase, and we have been making a conscious effort to integrate it into daily conversation ever since.  Real mature, right?

I love Jamie for many reasons: for being an advocate for fresh, wholesome ingredients and healthy eating, for being unabashedly passionate about cooking, and now for suggesting that my onions and garlic make love to each other in my pan.

This onion soup is just the most perfect thing for this cold New York autumn. The smell of sage cooking in butter is now one of my favorite things in the world. I skipped the last step of putting it in the oven with the cheese and bread on top. I know, it’s probably a really important thing to skip, especially when it comes to presentation, and you don’t get that lovely cheesy, bready top layer. But I simply did not have the patience or the oven-safe dish ware to do it, and that’s why I have the pretty picture from the website and not one of my own ;). For now, I opted instead to just sprinkle cheddar into my hot bowl of soup, and serve it with a side of toast, and it suited me just fine. It’s a very hearty soup that stands quite well on its own as a meal.