French Onion Soup

In my life, two things are certain. One, I love my mother. Two, my mother loves French Onion soup more than pretty much any other meal.

So, when I saw the french onion soup recipe in the Les Halles Cookbook, I knew I had to make the dish especially for her. And what better time to do so than when I stay with her over Thanksgiving weekend? I ran it by mom and my sisters, and they all agreed that it might just be the best idea ever. So when Thanksgiving Day came around, Husband J and I trucked two quarts of the dark chicken stock I made last week out to the suburbs so that we could make French Onion soup for the family on Black Friday.

We started out the day by avoiding the Black Friday crowds and heading to the antique mall (where I found a vintage (looking) half bottle of Eau de Joy, score!!!), then shopping for ingredients at the local Whole Foods. Once the onions, port, cheese and baguette were in hand, we faced a different problem--no oven-proof soup crocks. I'd thought of bringing my ramekins from home, but it seemed too much trouble to bring those and all of the chicken stock needed for the soup. But my plan to find adorable vintage onion soup crocks at the antique mall fell through when said adorable crocks didn't exist. There were good looking ones at the Whole Foods, but they were individually packaged with powdered cheese soups (bleh). So Husband J and I did the unthinkable... we ventured into the local K-Mart.

We wandered the aisles, half cowering in fear, gazing at the cheap-ass Martha Stewart collection kitchenwares and the disproportionate number of deep fryers. As we were about to give up, Husband J suddenly found a set of adorable red flower-shaped ramekins, absolutely perfect for our soup purposes. We gleefully snapped up six, and ran home to prepare the soup.

First step is of course, prepare the onions. The recipe calls for one big onion per serving, and chopping six onions proved pretty time consuming, and kind of offensive. I'm not really bothered by chopping onions, but as I went from one to the next, everyone started to complain about watering eyes and started opening windows and turning on fans. I? Shed nary a tear. Weird, right?

Anyway, once chopped, the onions went into the pot to caramelize with a huge load of butter.





It took a while for the onions to get dark and beautiful, but once they were, we poured in some port:



and some vinegar:



and some bacon:



then added the chicken stock and herbs, and brought the whole mess to a boil, then simmer. While the soup simmered, we toasted baguettes brushed with oil to make toasts, grated a ton of Gruyere, and prepared a big salad.



Simmering...

With the soup finished, it's time for the fun part! First float a toast in the bowl, then pile the Gruyere on top. Then put the bowls under a preheated broiler so the cheese melts and chars and forms a crust.



This is where I ran into some problems--Mom's broiler requires that several buttons be pushed before it turns on, and I foolishly only pushed one. The broiler didn't turn on, but the residual heat in the oven melted the cheese into a greasy mess with oil pooling on top of the soups and the baking sheet. I realized what had happened after a minute and turned the broiler on, but the crusts were not as robust as they could have been. I mopped up all the oil I could, and served.



Well, as always, the soup was a huge hit. Mom loved it, which was very satisfying, and to me it tasted exactly like the real thing, what you'd order in a classy French restaurant. (Minus, my grandmother commented, excess salt and gobs of cheese, which I think was a compliment).

Lessons Learned: Make sure the broiler is on before putting the cheese soups under it. Just because you are not affected by onions doesn't mean everyone else is. It is possible to produce delicious french onion soup in your own kitchen. K-Mart is good for something after all.

Next Week: Braised short ribs

Crème Brûleé

I'm usually not one to go with the pretentious french accents on words. I mean, really, especially "crème" because it makes me think of low-rent face creams or hair dye at home kits that try to class it up by writing "crème" instead of "cream." But crème brûleé has THREE different types of accent letter (whoa!), and besides, it is classy, not low-rent-dressed-up-as-classy. So we'll use the accents today.

Crème brûleé was the first really French dessert I ever ate while in Paris. I went as a treat for my 16th birthday (I know, super privileged, right? Not so much, actually went with my Dad who was there on business and decided it would be fun to take me and Grandma along... well we all had to share a tiny room and they snored, so I ended up sleeping in the bathtub every night. But Paris!) We had our first nice dinner at the restaurant atop the Musee d'Orsay, which was amazing. I had escargots for the first time at that meal, which I piggishly refused to share (more garlic butter for me). But when dessert time came, I had my first bite of vanilla-infused custard with crunchy sugar top, and it was love at first bite. It's still my favorite dessert, and I particularly love it infused with tea flavors, like earl grey, jasmine or matcha. But vanilla is still the best.

Mom also loves crème brûleé--it is her favorite dessert too--so I knew when I saw the recipe in the Les Halles Cookbook I'd have to make it for her. The opportunity arose this weekend when she decided to host family dinner when my sister came into town from Chicago. Well, sort of decided. The conversation went a bit like this.

Mom: "Sister M has asked for her favorite dinner tonight--Thanksgiving turkey and all the sides."

Me: "There is no way I am making a fucking turkey. But I'll make dessert."

Mom: "What's for dessert?"

Me: "Crème brûleé."

Mom: "Ooooh..."

Done and done. I had egg yolks to use up and a tube of vanilla beans, so I was ready to go. I hauled these, plus my ramekins out to the suburbs to cook dessert in mom's kitchen.

Tony's crème brûleé recipe is easily the richest I have ever made. Most call for a mix of cream and milk, with four to six egg yolks. Tony wants a full QUART of heavy cream and TEN egg yolks. It took all of my eggs plus all of mom's eggs to get the right amount.

First I halved the vanilla bean, and scraped the middles into the cream with a knife, putting the shell into the cream once it was scraped clean.


Add sugar, then put the pot onto the stove to boil.


Next, whisk the remaining sugar into the egg yolks. Once the cream boiled, Husband J helped to slowly pour splashes of cream into the yolks, while I whisked to make sure they didn't curdle. We poured the mixture into ramekins, which we put into pyrex dishes half-filled with water.


They went in the oven for 50 minutes, until the tops were set, but jiggled a little.


The custards cooled while we finished our turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, steamed vegetables and cranberry sauce. As the family relaxed on the deck, I dumped a tablespoon of granulated sugar (Tony calls for brown, but Mom's brown sugar was disgustingly rock-hard, so granulated it was) on top of the custards. They went under the broiler, set on high, until the sugar liquefied, caramelized and charred a little.



I served them still warm--we couldn't wait for dessert much longer. Everyone went crazy for these crème brûleés, though by the time we got through our dinners AND dessert, we were all feeling pretty gluttonous and nauseated. (The desserts were BIG, too.) Everyone scraped their bowls pretty clean, except mom who insisted on saving half of hers (and pouring everyone's scraps into her ramekin) for lunch tomorrow. For me, the vanilla bean really made the dish. I'd never actually made a dessert with a vanilla bean before, having previously only used vanilla extract. Even with the random Indonesian beans I found at Whole Foods (which were NOT cheap by any means), the vanilla flavor was super strong yet subtle and just plain delicious. I also liked using so much sugar on the tops, as they cracked like very proper crème brûleés in a satisfying way. I like crunching the top and mixing the bits into the cream so that I get sugar top in every bite. Delicious! Grandma even said I'd beat out the crème brûleés made by Cousin A, who is a pastry chef... though I'm pretty sure she was just being nice. All in all, a big dessert success.

Oh, additionally, we brought some of the rillettes over as an appetizer, and even picky Sister A ate and enjoyed the delicious porky goodness. We have one more big tupperware of pork to go. Takers???

Lessons learned: Vanilla bean is always best. With crème brûleé, the richer the better, but I kinda want to throw up now. I'm so going to gain 30 pounds while doing this project.

Next week: Soupe au Pistou