The culinary muse has returned to my kitchen. It had left suddenly for a while, reducing me to boxed meals (Hamburger Helper, Macaroni Grill) and oven-baked entrees (Tyson chicken patties, Ore Ida potatoes/fries, Gorton’s fish fillets). Now it has returned and since then I have made several exciting dishes, about half of them with my daughter either looking over my shoulder or digging right in there with me. She is a wonderful little helper and shares my enthusiasm for food. I have high hopes that she will become a cook with as much or more lust than I, perhaps even pursuing it as a career and setting loose the creative bug I see within her through the artistry of food.
Peeling shrimp
Making strawberry ice cream
Just last week my muse bid me make something I haven’t made in quite a while: French onion soup. Known as soupe à l'oignon à la lyonnaise in France, this recipe has evolved since ancient times (it goes as far back as the Romans and perhaps even more) and experienced a resurgence in popularity in the 1960’s thanks to the introduction of French cooking into American households (we can hold the inimitable Julia Child personally responsible for that – thank you, Julia!). Originally a sort of peasant dish which is rumored to have begun with Lyonian silk laborers, otherwise known as canuts, it has evolved with time and larger budgets to include the finest ingredients. And it all began because of its primary constituent: the cheap and prolific Allium cepa, the bulb onion.
I have always loved onions - the aroma and flavor they impart to all kinds of food is immeasurable. I enjoy smelling my fingertips after I have sliced and chopped them – the smell lingers beneath my skin for days. All of my wooden cutting boards retain its pungent and delicious odor in the top layers of the grain. Though my eyes water copiously from the sulphenic acids these diminutive bulbs produce, I weep with ecstasy while cutting them, reveling in their smell, their texture and their many interesting properties, medicinal, nutritive and otherwise. I even love their appearance when cut in half, their layered petals forming a titillating core replete with voluptuous curves and subtle tonal transitions reminiscent of a Georgia O’Keefe painting.
When a serious cook or a serious eater sits down and really thinks about it, onions are a part of nearly every cuisine the world over. Raw or cooked, they most often play a co-starring role in recipes but French onion soup is one of the few dishes that pushes this garden vegetable to the forefront. I was more than happy to go to the grocery store and shop for the ingredients for this soup as I rarely have an opportunity to stock my kitchen with that much onion. Though he enjoys the flavor it adds to food, my husband cannot stand to see onion in what he is eating nor chew it (he’s got a thing with texture and onions feel “gross” in his mouth). He has complained about it for years so when I do add it to things, I have to be sneaky and my food processor (bless you, Cuisinart) helps with that job by finely mincing and/or partially liquefying it.
The particular recipe that I made came from a favored culinary magazine called “Cuisine At Home”. This recipe employs the use of three different types of onion: red, white and yellow. Not necessary but I think the cooks for that magazine did it for effect and not flavor. Besides, it was neat to see a veritable rainbow of onion on my cutting board as I worked. I set my Wolfgang Puck stainless steel stockpot onto the stove and lit the burner, poured some extra virgin olive oil into it and let it heat. I then deposited a literal mountain of onions into it and began “sweating” them out, a time-consuming process that CAH says ensures super soft, super sweet onions. The onions, robust and crisp at the outset, reduced in size by more than half once this was done. Now it was time to caramelize them.
Caramelization of the onions is the brunt of flavor in this soup. Already soft and having leached out all their water, the continuing cooking process goads them into releasing their precious sugars. This is where the magic happens. As the oxidation of sugars occur, the translucent strings of onion begin to shrivel once more ever so slightly and turn golden, then brown, the volatile chemicals released mimicking the rich, warm color, aroma and flavor of caramel. Caramelization is a process that takes even longer than sweating (twice as long, in fact) and to reach optimum flavor, one must not be in a hurry when making this soup, lest they miss out on the potential explosion of flavor that patience rewards.
Once this crucial step was complete, I deglazed my pan with a delicate combination of dry white wine (Glen Ellen Pinot Grigio, inexpensive and tasty - never use a wine in food that you wouldn’t drink out of a glass) and dry sherry (don’t use cooking sherry – the difference in taste is huge). Now those sugary onions were absorbing the sweetness of the wines and I put my nose above the stockpot, inhaling the aroma and letting the steam open my pores. The heat on high and liquids boiling, the pungent amalgam of fermented fruit and alcohol rising in the steam was as intoxicating as a few sips of the wine itself (and believe me, I didn’t pass on a small taste of both – sometimes it’s good to gear one’s palate with a small taste of each ingredient, if possible).
I added a small amount of flour, a mixture of chicken and beef broth, a sprig of time straight from my herb garden and let it all simmer for a bit, seasoning with salt and pepper at the end. My soup, aromatic and beautiful in its deep, rich brown color, was nearly ready.
I’ll admit that I cut corners at this point. The best way to serve this soup is with toasted slices of baguette bread (French bread to go with a French soup, of course!) on top of the soup, which is then topped by a liberal sprinkling of either Swiss or Emmenthaler cheese and placed under a broiler to melt. The nice, sharp cheeses contrast beautifully with the sweet flavor of the soup and the baguette adds fabulous crunch and texture. But I couldn’t wait. And I didn’t have baguette bread. What I did have was half a loaf of Italian bread. So I cut off a few slices, topped the soup with shredded Swiss, didn’t bother with the broiler, and dug in. Though I didn’t finish it off as suggested by CAH, it was still fabulous and my eyes literally rolled to the back of my head from rapture at the first spoonful. I even wiped the last remnants of broth from the sides of the bowl with my bread, so consumed was I about wasting any valuable ounce of flavor.
The history, the tradition, the ritual, the labor, the smells, from the first bite to the last – this is why I love cooking. And this isn’t the first food adventure from my humble kitchen, nor will it be my last.
P.S. – To everyone who reads this blog, have a safe and happy Fourth of July.
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