Onion Soup, Round 2

I have said it before, and now I will say it again:
NEVER QUESTION JULIA!!!

The Barefoot Contessa's recipe is torn up and in the trash. I shall not stray again.

This weekend I followed Julia's recipe for French Onion Soup, and it was so good... dare I say it? I didn't even need to put the crouton of melted cheese on it!!!
And I have stated before my love of melted cheese. So you know I'm serious.

This is how it all went down.

Sauté in 3 tablespoons of butter, and one of olive oil, about 3 medium sized yellow onions, sliced. Cook with the lid on for 15 minutes. (Try not to cut off your thumb while slicing the onions. I have never been so happy for my flimsy excuse for fingernails as when I realized that without them, I would have just removed a large section of flesh. Instead, I only had to file down a split nail. Phew!)

Once the onions have softened, sprinkle with 1 tsp salt and 1/4 tsp sugar (to assist in caramelizing) and cook for another 30-40 minutes, stirring frequently, until you have uniformly browned onions.

At the same time the onions are caramelizing, heat up your 4 quarts of stock. 

I used 2 quarts veal stock from glacé, and 2 quarts beef stock from bullion cubes.

Now, I said "Never Question Julia" and I meant it. But adjusting is not the same as questioning. Julia did not call for any herbs or spices beyond salt and pepper, and I just find that... dubious. Maybe that is The Traditional French Way, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. So when I was heating the stock before adding it to the (beautifully) caramelized onions, I threw in a bay leaf and a couple of sprigs of thyme, to be removed later. And I'm glad I did it, because as previously mentioned, the soup is DELICIOUS!
And I rationalized that when Julia is making her stock for any dish, she probably puts one of those little bouquets of herbs in it anyway, so really I was just trying to improve my crappy beef-broth-from-a-bullion-cube so that it would be acceptable to her. See? Conflict averted.

After 35 minutes, my onions looked like this.

Too far away? OK.

How's that?

GORGEOUS! 

I know.

Ok enough patting myself on the back for not screwing up the onions.

Julia directs to remove the soup from the heat, and then add in the boiling stock, followed by half a cup of white wine. When I got to this point, I was down to maybe 1/4 cup of white wine. No, not because I had been sampling while cooking, but rather because while I was caramelizing the onions, the bottom of my pan was getting an alarming amount of little brown bits stuck to it. Now, these are the flavorful bits that you want to keep, but when they appear and you still have 15 minutes of cooking time before your onions are where they aught to be, there is worry over burning those tasty little bits.

So, while I was caramelizing the onions, any time I felt too many brown bits were accumulating in the bottom of the pan, I would add a tablespoon or two of the white wine, scrape the bits up, and continue to stir and cook my onions. It worked beautifully, and probably added even more flavor to the onions.

Following scientifically tested recipes (a.k.a. anything Julia Child published) and instructions is good, but understanding enough about cooking to adjust to your own cooking conditions can save a meal. 

Not to mention hours scrubbing a burnt pot.

Moving on, the soup is supposed to simmer another half hour, "partially covered" on your stovetop, and then get 3 tablespoons of dry sherry added in. At the end of this I fished out my sprigs of thyme and bay leaf, and checked the soup in case I needed to adjust any seasonings.

I did not.

It was marvelous.

And I dug right in.

Eventually I will get around to serving this with the covering of browned and bubbling cheese. For now, I am just enjoying my French Onion Soup.

Thanks again, Julia!

Soup Crock(le) Debacle

Update!!!

Thanks to my awesome friend Jenn, I have discovered that Le Creuset DOES in fact make various colors of soup crock. Now the only problem is which one to pick???

Here is the aforementioned boring brown we all know:

 

And his stubby, pint-sized friend:

There is just nothing appetizing about that. Not to mention the strange knobby handle that also makes it looks like a teapot with enhancement issues.

So really, the question I pose to all of you is this: What color?

Cherry?

Cobalt?

Kiwi?

Dijon?

Black?

Caribbean?

White?









Or should I hold out for them to also come out in the newest shades of pale "Lilac" and the darker purple "Cassis" which I can only find a picture of here.

But then look at how cute this is!

This could actually be the answer to my problem! Or is it too big for single-serving soup? What the hell is a mini cocotte?

I also found these as possibly in the running, but they did a bait and switch on me because they were shown in a pretty pale blue w/ navy trim, but then I could only find them in this cream w/ black, or brown.

This lovely item is the Paula Deen Low Country Soup bowl.

Run.

Run far away.

FASTER!!!

Since that was quite scary, and I didn't mean to do that to you, I shall end with these adorable little numbers, also from Le Creuset.

My, what adorable little berries you have!

Get your mind out of the gutter!

They are supposed to be bakeware but I can only imagine using them as containers of various jams served in some quaint country breakfast setting complete with scones and crumpets and Devonshire cream.

I just love the squat little blueberry, tho!!! (and just realized he reminds me of Boo from Super Mario only he's missing his face and giant tongue...)

While I am considering waiting on the Cassis soup bowl because I am such a sucker for most things purple, I would honestly like to know how people would vote. So scroll back to the top of this blog post and vote in that little box on the right! And someone explain to me what a cocotte is because when I looked it up online it said,
1. (Cookery) a small fireproof dish in which individual portions of food are cooked and served
2. a prostitute or promiscuous woman

Well thank you, I guessed at definition #1 because it was made by Le Creuset, and #2 shut your mouth I'm a married woman!

But go vote and tell me what color covered in bubbling browning cheese would make you happiest when served my Fabulous French Onion Soup!

A French Connection

I have a new cooking goal.

I am finally going to make French Onion Soup. And I don't mean onions and beef broth. I mean multiple kinds of wine and brandy and slow cooking and MOUNDS upon MOUNDS of cheese melted on top. The question is whose recipe to choose? Some use beef stock, some chicken. Some white wine, some red. Some use 3 kinds of booze so who cares what kind of broth you start out with (Hello, Barefoot Contessa... you may just win. But I don't know where I'd find veal stock...) Then there's the fail-safe Julia Child option, but when she cooks with Jacques Pepin he does the opposite of what she does, and she goes along with it! HOW TO CHOOOOOOSE?!?!?!?
 If anyone out there reading this has a favorite recipe, by all means pass it along/put in your vote.

I have always loved French Onion Soup growing up, but I hated the onions. (Again, I am weird. But my mom is allergic to garlic, so instead she used onions in everything she cooked. So I think I just developed an aversion early on. And now I compensate by putting garlic in everything I legitimately can. Go figure.) I still hate the onions. Really all I wanted as a kid was the broth and the big slab of melted cheese on top, and that remains what I want. If I order it as delivery from a local French place (complete with wads of melted cheese on slab of bread, so legit), I take a fork and sift out large amounts of the onions so I can better enjoy the broth. It's just SO GOOD!

*Side note: when I make chicken parm, I could care less about the chicken. All I really want is the melted mozzarella in warm tomato sauce. I only eat the chicken so there is some excuse of health/protein in my meal. So there is a pattern to my oddness.

Here's a question: Why are all onion soup crocks that fugly range of brown? Where are the Le Creuset crocks in their new eggplant color, or warm red, apple green, etc? Why does brown soup have to come in a brown crock?
Someone look into this! Or fix it!
It distresses me.

Ideally I would wait for the next snowfall for a perfect backdrop in which to make a steaming pot of onion soup, but I can't count on the weather to oblige me, so I guess I'll put it out there that I shall attempt this by the end of March. I just need the following things:

- Non-fugly soup crocks in which to serve/melt the all-important cheese topping
- Narrow down which recipe to use
- Sexy sexy goggles to wear while I am chopping that many onions

The flaw in my plan is that Mike does not like onion soup. But I cook things to his liking all the time, and it's his loss that he doesn't like onion soup, so, screw it.
More for me.
Yay!

So, dear reader(s), I honestly ask for your two cents. Vote on a non-ugly soup crock if you can find one. And vote for your favorite recipe so I can figure out which to use. (However, if your recipe calls for pumpernickel bread as the crouton, you can just stop now. Blech!)
Maybe if I get enough suggestions I can put one of those swanky polls on my blog with links and people can vote for real!
So sift through your cook books and get back to me.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand... GO!