Back in Town

Well, I’m back in Hoboken after the Thanksgiving break. Not much of a break for me, between cooking a full turkey dinner with five sides and two desserts, as well as brunch the next day and fresh venison tenderloin, I’m cooked out.

What to do on days you really just don’t feel like cooking? I turn to the French. When it comes to restaurants you can’t go wrong with the brasserie. The food of the working class of France is where it is at in my opinion. The food that makes me imagine Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin ate the same thing many years ago at the Auberge Ravoux in the south of France.

And in my opinion the finest thing you can order at a brasserie is the onion soup. The steak frites comes a close second. But really is there is nothing more delicious than tucking into a cheesy, bubbly, steaming, bowl of French onion soup?

The key to this recipe today is as much technique as it is actual ingredients. Cooking the onions to a golden caramel color will ensure that your soup will have the depth of flavor that a great bowl of onion soup should have. Some of my secrets for ensuring a great soup are: a mix of onion types, a tiny bit of sugar on the onions at the beginning, a splash of a nice dark rich port to further sweeten the pot and a toast on the croutons (I just use leftover Balthazar baguette for this) before the broiler.

I recently read a recipe for this soup that included cooking it in the oven for over 3 hours. Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t have time for this. The sugar sprinkled on the onions should help you achieve some of the flavor a long, slow cook in the oven does.

Essential to this dish is a trip under the broiler for the soup with its cheesy top. If you don’t have a proper French onion soup bowl you can just pass the croutons under the broiler sprinkled with cheese and then top the soup bowl with these, but it is not as satisfying as really digging into the soup through the molten cheese. You can pick up oven-safe soup bowls pretty much anywhere (such as Ikea or Target) but my favorite source is Fishes Eddy in Manhattan.

The original inspiration for this recipe comes not from a fancy French Cookbook, but one of my mother’s old cookbooks from the 70s.

French Onion Soup au Gratin

Serves 4

4 cups onions (about 4 onions, 3 Spanish and 1 red) thinly sliced
1/4 cup butter
2 tsp sugar
40 oz good quality beef stock
1/2 cup port or red wine if you have no port
1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
2 tsp fresh thyme
Pepper to taste
1/2 of a leftover baguette, sliced
1 cup grated emmental or gruyere cheese (or a mix)

In a large saucepan melt the butter and then add the onions. Sprinkle over the sugar and stir. Cook the onions over medium-high heat until they are tender and dark golden brown. This will take about 20 to 30 minutes.

When the onions are cooked add the port and deglaze the pan (scrape up the brown bits) then add the beef stock, Worcestershire sauce, fresh thyme and pepper. Bring to a boil and let simmer for 15 minutes. After 15 minutes reduce the heat to a simmer and taste the soup to see if it needs salt. Don’t add salt before this so you can taste how much salt the beef broth has.

While the soup is simmering place cut each slice of the baguette in half. Place the croutons under a preheated broiler until golden in color, about 1 to 2 minutes. Ladle the soup carefully into your oven-safe soup bowls and leave 1 inch of space at the top. Place the soup bowls on a cookie sheet and sprinkle the top of each bowl with the croutons and then with the grated cheese. Place the whole lot under the broiler until they are bubbling and brown.

Serve with a green salad.