In Chatterbox, last night, Chong Ming was waxing most lyrical about French Onion Soup which, until today, I had never made before. I was so inspired that I decided most decidedly to make some today. I shall now attempt to write SOME bits of this post in French, since it is about France's greatest contribution to the world of simple cooking: French Onion Soup.
J'aime beaucoup la soupe à l'oignon française! Ma expérience premier de cette soupe a été à Le Bistro Au Petit Salut dans la rue Chip Bee pres de Holland Village. Elle a été pas mal, mais ça n'a pas mémorable. Tout ce que je me rappelle elle a été tres cher.
En typique, la soupe a l'oignon française est préparé avec les oignons caraméliser, le consomme de boeuf, des émincés de baguette et beaucoup de fromage (en typique, il est gruyére). Le Wikipedia dire le fromage est juste pour embellissement, mais je pense il est tres important (vous pouvez voir l'image au-dessus!).
En Anglais:
I LOVE French Onion Soup, oh my god. My first experience with it was at Le Bistro Au Petit Salut at Chip Bee road near Holland V. It wasn't bad, though it wasn't memorable, and all I can remember is that it was very expensive.
French Onion Soup is typically made with caramelised onions, beef stock, slices of baguette and lots of cheese (usually gruyére). Wikipedia says that the cheese is mainly for embellishment, but I think it's very important (and you can see for yourself in the picture above!).
That took me way longer to write in French.
This is a dish that, I figure, if you want to enjoy thoroughly, you have to approach with a certain French sensibility of obsessive compulsion. Not that it's complicated, but you have to be patient and insist on getting things right. For one, the onions have to be caramelised until dark mahogany like bejeweled, sickly-sweet toffees or sticky Christmas yams. Any lighter and French obsessive compulsion will take over and make you stick the onions back over the heat.
The best way to do this, as my laziness drove me to discover, is to abandon the French sensibility of doing things like Escoffier would have (which is with back-breaking stirring of onions in a sweaty kitchen), and to use the slow cooker. The slow cooker gives you the right amount of heat over a fiendishly long period of time to reduce the sharp, tear-jerking onions from pearly white to luscious brown, sweet, sweet spheres of jam. It is also infinitely less hands-on and fussy than being enslaved to a frying pan of onions for 1-2 hours on end.
To do this, simply throw 6-8 (8 for largish local varieties) yellow onions into the slow cooker with 125g of butter and about 280 ml of stock (any will do, but beef works very well). Set on low, cover and wait for 14-16 hours. Toward the end, lift one onion out to check the colour. It should look like one of these:
I cannot stress the importance of wrapping these up and chucking them in the freezer immediately after they are drained (cover the liquid in a bowl with clingfilm and plunge into an iced-water bath) because the warmth attracts bacteria. I stupidly forgot to cover the cooking liquid when I was cooling it in a bowl of iced water, and subsequently got a really bad tummy ache from drinking the soup later. Count yourself warned. You should also skim the butter off the cooking liquid and save it for other useful things.
For the soup, individual portions are, according to Rose Levy Beranbaum, 1/2 a cup each of the caramelised onion (sliced, of course, that's about 1 onion), cooking liquid and beef broth. Combine in a small pot, bring to the boil, pour into a bowl and throw in 2-3 slices of toasted baguette. Place over the preparation a few thin slices of gruyére and grate some more over to completely cover the soup. Place under a hot grill (like that in your oven) until melted, golden and making pock-pock sounds.
The soup I made today was prepared with lousy Gardenia Country Loaf, which tasted bland and uninteresting. As Rose writes (see above link), the best soupes a l'oignons are made with the best bread and cheese. I am baking a sourdough loaf tomorrow, which I think will make an excellent addition to this dish. My sense with this is that the blend of perfectly caramelised onions and broth will make an excellent soup to go by even without the calorie-laden cheese and bread, though the latter is filling enough to have constituted my dinner.
I confess that I am not terribly fond of gruyére cheese, though, because it smells to me like a very unpleasant bodily substance (if you don't know what I'm referring to, you're better off not knowing). It works very well with the dish, though, the tartness of the cheese seems to complement the sweetness of the onions very well, holding its own amidst the assault on the taste-buds. Anyway, one can't really go wrong with caramelised onions- the flavour of the soup is incomparable, sweet, savoury, cheesy, wholesome, elle est parfait. So happy happy if you're trying this out!
Amusez-vous bien!
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