One of the things I love about a good soup is how easy they are - chop up your ingredients, saute a bit in oil or butter, add stock and herbs, and then let simmer away for however long you've got. Soup can be as structured or as freeform as your ingredients allow - it's a real wonder meal.
That said, there are some classics that really do deserve a bit more attention, and French Onion Soup is one of them.
Interestingly, for a lot of people the term 'french onion' was likely first associated with heavily creamed dips and Jatz crackers. As a kid, I devoured entire bowls of french onion dip at parties and BBQs. When my tastes started to broaden, and I moved out of home, I encountered the real thing. This taught me two important lessons:
1. French onion dip is a crime against food and likely humanity as well.
2. For true disdain and cranky service, you can't go past a pissed off Frenchman.
It was... some time in the early nineties, and the restaurant in question was a converted cellar in a Sydney laneway, called Le Guillotine. Sounds cheesy, yeah, but trust me, this place made a French Onion Soup that you'd gladly form a revolutionary government for. Most of the staff were either French or pretending, and man... they hated anyone who interrupted their busy Gaulish habits. You know - smoking, wearing berets, and wearing onions instead of cooking them.
But that soup stuck with me, and when I was recently staring at the large amount of onions in our pantry, it seemed the kind of thing that an onion would be proud to be a part of.
French Onion Soup
In the classic French style this is a dish that started out as simple peasant fare, but has now become more of a dinner party staple. Say to someone that you're cooking up a pot of French Onion Soup and they're likely to go "Wow, that's cool" instead of "You poor peasant sod." But that's the genesis of this dish - in many regions of France onions are plentiful, grow all year round, and are easy to come by.
It is, in effect, the inland version of bouillabaisse, though far easier to cook, at least.
ingredients
Eight medium onions
Goose fat
Beef stock
Sprig of Thyme
Sprig of Flat Parsley
Bay leaves
Dry white wine
Salt and pepper
Brown sugar
Crusty bread
Gruyere cheese
That's a lot of onions.
The first step is to get chopping those onions up. You'll want to make sure you've got a good sharp knife on hand, too - it'll not only make that much work a lot easier, but the onions need to be sliced as regularly as possible, so that it cooks as evenly as possible. After skinning the onions, I chopped each in half, then sliced away, producing one hell of a mound of onion, and making myself cry like a two-time Oscar-winner.
Once sliced up, add two large scoops of goose fat to a heavy bottomed sauce pan, introduce a medium heat, and toss in the onions. Toss the pan a couple of times, cover, let sit for about ten minutes. This essentially steams and softens the onions for the next phase - caramelising.
This is where you need to be a bit careful. The onions will need constant attention to stop them from starting to overcook; you'll be stirring every few minutes for about fifteen to twenty minutes. It's slightly more intensive than making a good risotto, but soon you'll see the mass onions reduced by about half, a lovely thick yet clear fluid start to build up in the pan, and the onions should be lovely and golden, and smell ever so sweetly.
Add a dash of wine to deglaze the pan, stirring vigorously to make sure you scrape all the tasty stuff up and into the dish itself. Then pour in the stock, and add the herbs and salt & pepper to taste. Turn up the heat to get a good boil, then reduce to simmer, covered, for about ten minutes.
When that time's up, uncover, add a teaspoon of brown sugar, and keep simmering uncovered for about a quarter of an hour. Technically, this is a dish that deserves a lot of time, but it can be made fast with a few tricks - that's where the brown sugar comes in, as it adds a further caramel texture. It's a cheat, but I want tasty food and time to enjoy it, dammit!
After this time you should have a lovely gold brown broth, and the attention of any partners within smelling range. Take off the heat and set aside - time for some cheesy toast!
Slice roughly centimeter thick chunks of bread - I used a fresh baguette - and sprinkle on some grated gruyere before placing under the griller. Technically, you should place the bread on the bowls of soup, sprinkle the cheese, and toast the whole lot, but I don't have oven proof bowls, and this is again a good shortcut. When the cheese is melted and just starting to brown, add soup to bowls, and top with the bread. Sprinkle a bit of spare gruyere into the soup itself, add cracked pepper, and you're done.
And oh... Gods... the tasty.
There's almost more solid onion in this than liquid, but it's rich and smooth without any bite. The goose fat adds a delicious silkiness to the soup, too, one that you just can't replicate with olive oil or butter, which is what most recipes call for. Really... you want the fat.
The toasted bread and gruyere adds great mouthfeel and flavour complexity, too. It's such a heartwarming meal, too - you just can't feel down enjoying something like this. And the brown sugar cheat works a charm - the caramel complexity of the dish is just about perfect.
In future I'll be keen to add some more authentic embellishments, like preparing my own veal stock beforehand, and investing in some properly rustic (and ovenproof) ramekins for an even better plating experience. But even as it stands, this is a keeper.
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