Travels and French Onion Soup

I return from frolicke, from merrymente, from traveles.  

Texas, NJ, New York, and Philadelphia: in pictures.

The Six Flags of Texas: Spain, France, Mexico,
Texas, Confederacy, and US.

Texas capital dome.  Ain't it purty?

Us in the capital.
Yes, my sweetheart is the cutest boy alive.

NYC! And colors!!

Times Square.
We got to 57th st but couldn't get closer.

In Philadelphia I got this flight of beers to go with my cheesesteak.  Yum!

I must admit I was glad to get home, even though I jumped off the plane and went straight to work, with my suitcase in tow.  I hitched a ride home to an apartment full of mold cultures (ew!) and a car with a flat tire and a flat spare.  But I'm so glad to have a kitchen again.  There's something comforting and also powerful about one's own kitchen.

Nothing I had previously made that was not in the freezer was fit to eat, so I attacked the onions before they could become mold cultures too.   French Onion Soup is the feast of peasants, and that's what I am, basically, these days.  It transforms lowly onions into a culinary masterpiece, through a slow and painstaking process.

How did I achieve such beautifully sliced onions for my soup?  All I can say is I love my mandoline.

I'm on a mission to create superior French Onion Soup.  It's not an easy recipe to master, and it requires a great deal of patience, which I don't exactly possess in great abundance.  The trick is to make a soup that is not overpoweringly strong but also not weak and watery.   French Onion Soup should have body and a slight bite, but "overpowering" can only be the most accurate way to describe many soups I have had, at Panera, for example. 

 One of the most important details of French Onion Soup (beyond the important browning process), is the beef broth.  I don't make beef broth from scratch (as of yet, anyway), and in an effort to economize, I decided not to go with Swanson's.

Which left that powdery stuff.  And the other stuff.  On the left is little tubs of goo (animal fat and flavoring, presumably), and on the right, granulated broth, which I have used many times and grew up consuming.


In theory the homestyle stock ought to be superior, but, of course, I wanted to test it.  It's a bit more expensive, for one thing.  One of the benefits of the powdered stock is that it's easy to dole out as much as you need, whereas the tubs make 3 1/2 cups of broth at a time. Which can be annoying if you need, say, four cups.  The benefits of Homestyle Stock is that it contains almost half as much salt.  Powdered stock contains a whopping 1040 mg of sodium per serving. That's 43% of your daily allowance, and I dunno about you, but one cup of French Onion Soup is not nearly enough.  Homestyle Stock has 700 mg--still a lot, but not quite as devastating.

So I tried it.  The homestyle stock has the smoothness that comes from having a stock with some fat in it.  Overall it has a gentler flavor, a very useful medium for the other flavors of the soup.

Granulated broth was salty.  Tasted side-by-side with the other almost all I could taste was the salt, which leads me to believe it's a pretty major rip-off.  It's mostly salt!

I modified this recipe mostly by accident;  I was in the middle of making it when I realized I didn't have wine, so I put the beer in instead.  Then the boyfriend dropped by with white wine, so I threw that in too.  The result was remarkably yummy, so I kept it. 

FRENCH ONION SOUP

1 TBS butter

1 TBS light olive oil

4 large onions, thinly sliced (don't use sweet onions--they are too mild)

2-5 garlic cloves, pressed

1 tsp dried thyme

2 TBS flour

1/2 c dry white wine

1 c stout beer

Heat the butter and oil over medium heat; add the onions and cook, stirring frequently, until they are soft and just beginning to brown. Add the garlic, sugar, and thyme and continue cooking for 30 to 35 minutes, until onions are browned and soft.

Sprinkle the flour over the onion mixture and stir until incorporated. Add wine, beer, and stock and bring to a boil. Skim off any surface residue and simmer for 45 minutes. 

Serve with garlic bread or cheese toast. 

So those pears crossed with apples? Whatever they are called? Papples? They have the sweetness of a pear but not the ripe texture.  They are crunchy like an apple but have the tender peel of a pear.  They're okay, but I would rather have my pears and apples independently.