Stroud's French Onion Soup

Stroud’s version of French Onion Soup

This version of French Onion Soup is one of my staples.  Simple.  Easy.  Even I can make it.  All it takes is time…a few hours of time.  But, the convenient thing is, you can put the main ingredient in a large, covered stock pot, pop it in a slow oven and not have to think about it until it’s time to fix supper.  Even then, you’ll have time to pour a generous wine and procrastinate, which is one of my specialties. Best of all, this can be supper all by itself!

While we’re procrastinating, let’s talk about the origins of this famous French delicacy that may not even be French.  Some say it’s derived from broth served during the Roman Empire.  I doubt any modern day historian actually tasted it.  Well, ancient history can often be only a wild ass guess anyway.

More recently, jump forward to the French King Louis XV (1710-1774).  The story goes, he returned from a hunting trip and there was nothing of interest in the castle larder, so he had some staring scullery surfs cough up some of their last onions pronto.  Not likely in my opinion. First off, came back empty handed? Didn't pop off a few royal deer with the royal musket?  Bet the royal brush beaters felt the taste of the lash for that!  

Peasants may have been starving, but unlikely the King and his court shared that fate. But, I could be wrong, and maybe the soup was the reason the King was also known as Louis the Well Beloved (Louis le Bien Aime), but then again, he died a hated man.

In America of the 1960s, I wouldn’t doubt that Julia Child had a hand in rekindling the soup's  popularity.

Don't know about the historic versions, but there are any number of differences between Julia’s Soupe à l’Oignon and mine.  First off, she takes the short cut of faster cooking. For another thing, her recipe uses yellow onions.  I prefer sweet onions. She adds sugar.  I do not. Also, I use a healthy pour of bourbon in my broth.  I suspect my three faithful readers will object to this gross misuse of Kentucky’s finest straight bourbon whiskey.  Fear not.  There's more in the cupboard.

On with the show.

Stroud’s version of French Onion Soup

Serves 4 as a main course

Heat the oven to 250ºF

5-6 large sweet onions, peeled, halved, and sliced thinly

8 pats of salted butter, or more to taste

1 Tablespoon flour

1 Cup bourbon

1 ½ quarts of beef broth.  I always use Bovril!!! About a Tablespoon per cup of water.

Hearty bread slices cut in quarters, slathered in olive oil and salted (using olive oil instead of butter adds to the crispness)

Slices of Provolone, Swiss, habanero cheddar, and shredded Parmesan cheeses

Olive Oil

Salt

Put a few Tablespoons of olive oil in a stock pot, add the sliced onions, toss, cover and slide it in the preheated oven.  Cook for about 4 hours, or longer. At the two hour point, add 4 pats of butter and put the pot back in the oven.  (Although I haven’t tried it, I think cooking the onions in a slow cooker would work just fine.)

When ready, the onions will be slightly yellow to brownish, and translucent (not the deep brown color you get when onions are caramelized).   There will also be a good bit of liquid in the pot.

Remove the pot from the oven and put it on the stovetop at medium heat.  Add salt and more butter.  Stir until the liquid has evaporated.

 There will be brown bits on the bottom.  Pour in the cup of bourbon to deglaze the pot and let it simmer for a few moments.  You’ll get the bourbon flavor without the alcohol taste.

Add the beef broth.  I always use Bovril!!

Keep the soup at a low simmer, turn the oven up to 325ºF and bake the seasoned bread until crisp.  

When the bread is ready, ladle the soup into large bowls, put pieces of bread on top, then layer the cheeses over the bread.

Bake in the 325ºF oven until the cheese is thoroughly melted.

Stand by to be thrilled when you hear your sniveling guests beg for more.

Sweet onions, butter, and most of all, long, slow cooking make this a soup you’ll be thinking about all day tomorrow!

Serve more wine with the soup and keep the bourbon handy, just in case. 

My Life in France by Julia Child, with Alex Prud’homme

France may be the most astonishingly different culture in all of Europe.  Not denigrating any other country and we all have our favorites.  Lived in Spain for years and love the country.  Lived in Germany and would never utter a complaint.  Great Britain?  Hell yes!

So, you see, I’m not claiming that France is the best or even that I like it the best.  I’m only saying that for my money France’s culture is the most astonishingly different.  Depending on your outlook, that can be either bad or good.  In my case, extreme enchantment. 

I’ve heard a lot of travelers remark that Parisians are rude and follow that up with:  It’s expensive and we hated it!  As though Paris is all there is to France. That opinion isn’t limited to Americans.  Heard it a lot from Germans. To aid you on your voyage of discovery, I offer this advice:  The French way is not like America’s or Germany’s way.  Accept that and you’ll relax and enjoy this strangely fascinating country and its people and way of life.

Unlike many of my fellow countrymen, I have always had a fabulous time in France, Paris included.

Recently I blogged about adventures in Provence and that laudatory book by Peter Mayle, A Year In Provence.

https://stroudallover.blogspot.de/2017/08/two-weeks-in-provence.html

https://stroudallover.blogspot.de/2017/08/chocolate-in-provence.html

https://stroudallover.blogspot.de/2017/09/a-year-in-provence-by-peter-mayle.html

Well, now I’ve got another book that will make you grab your bib and buy a First Class ticket on Air France:  My Life In France, by Julia Child, with Alex Prud’homme.

I’ll confess that I carried this book in my man-purse everywhere I went.  Couldn’t put it down and didn’t want to.  Those who know me will spew out slanderous accusations that Julia’s love of wine spurred me on, drove me to drink and drive.  You fools, that what a wife is for, so I can drink and ride and read!  I also took it to my favorite bakery cum coffee shop. Multi-tasking, reading in English, speaking to the irresistible women around me in German.  Yes, yes, men too.  But, always back to the book and my new friend, Julia.

Have both my loyal readers heard of Julia Child?  She’s the famous chef who almost singlehandedly brought French cuisine into America’s homes and kitchens, with her seminal work:  Mastering the Art of French Cooking, volumes I and II.

My Life In France, written by Julia and Alex Prud’homme, uses Julia’s multitudinous letters, reminiscences, and her husband’s letters and photographs to tell the often humorous and frequently intimate story of her love affair with the country and it’s cuisine. 

She started out as a normal American woman, with only a smattering of cooking knowledge. Her knowledge of France was a dark void.  As she wrote on Wednesday, November the third, 1948:  “As I gazed through the portal at the twinkling lights of le Harve I had no idea what I was looking at…In Pasadena, California, where I was raised, France did not have a good reputation.”

As she and her husband sat at a table in the Norman restaurant La Couronne, her husband translated what the waiter at the next table said to his patrons, explaining where the chicken they ordered was raised, how it will be cooked, which side dishes would go best with it and which wines would be suitable.

Her comment said it all about the difference between French and American culture.  “Wine?  With lunch?”

But, Julia was a woman of strong attitudes and stronger passions.  Once the tastes and flavors of the French kitchen enveloped her, her path opened and widened with the popping cork of each bottle, and the placement of each pot on the stove.

What I found so enticing about My Life In France is the intimacy of how it was written, as if a very famous chef offered a glass of wine, sat down at your kitchen table and told you her life’s story, amid lengthy struggles, staggering failures and heroic successes.  As some would say, My Life In France is a painting that includes warts and all.  Interesting? Fascinating?  Oh, hell YES!

Most of all, it’s a story of the development of a passion and following that passion like a lit fuse to a stick of dynamite, in spite of the nay-sayers and dream killers many of whom were family members.   The story is so unlikely and convoluted that it could only be replicated in the saccharine sweet pages of a romantic novel.

And speaking of romance, it’s also the tale of a lifetime love affair between Julia and her husband Paul, and the unlikely journey of togetherness, yet always keeping Julia’s passion in the forefront.

As she wrote so simply and eloquently:  “…the sole meuniere I ate at La Couronne on my first day in France, in November 1948…was an epiphany!”

Julia, wherever you are, I want you to know how much I enjoyed this little chat.  And, I dearly hope both my readers do, too. I hope they will all have their own epiphany and find the trail that leads them to follow even their most unlikely dreams.

And to that end, dear readers, I raise a glass….Á votre santé!

Beef Bourguignon: My version

Not being French myself, you may scoff at my taking liberties with one of the Frenchy-est of dishes.  I assure you, I mean no disrespect, especially when cooking with good French wine. My recipe calls for a whole bottle!  And truly, as in so many French wonders of la cuisine, I feel certain that every French chef, from amateur to mother-teur to master-teur painted their own shades of culinary color on Burgy-Beef.  Vive la difference!

To be brief, Beef Bourguignon is really beef stew, but cooked with wine, herbs, and vegetables, over time, the flavors of this stew become magically and delightfully complex.

The one thing to remember about Beef Bourguignon is IT TAKES TIME.  Try to do this recipe in an hour and your guests will stomp out in disgust, leaving your reputation in tatters, your spouse sobbing, and your children fighting over the peanut butter.

The good news is, you can make this dish a day or two before, and the flavor becomes even better.

I know you would feel slighted if I let l’histoire, the story of Burgy-Beef, end after that breezy intro.  Your well-traveled imagination needs to savor a bit of history and intrigue.  I strive to allay your fears and feed your lust for knowledge.  I see you’re quivering in anticipation. You YEARN to know who started this delicious beef stew and so forth. Quiver no more.

It began with cattle, as you might guess from the name, which is not Caterpillar or Muskrat or Hind-end-of-Donkey Bourguinon.  In a short phrase, it began with Charolais cattle, known for their tender, lean meat.  These hoofed wonders come from the Charolles region of southern Burgundy.  I confess I do not know who started this marvel of the French kitchen, but I feel safe in saying it was not a highly paid chef in a restaurant with more stars than the five Chiefs of Staff.   I do know it who made it famous.  Chef Auguste Escoffier with his 1903 cookbook, Le Guide Culinaire.  Now, here’s the intrigue.  Escoffier was later fired from London’s Savoy Hotel for cooking the books.  That really stirred things up.

Julia Child made some changes to Escoffier’s original recipe, the main one being that she chose to cut the beef into cubes rather than cooking it whole.  As for your chef de jour, I follow Julia.

Rather than continuing with things you will not even remember between text messages, here’s the recipe:

Beef Bourguignon Chez Stroud

3 ½ pounds (approx. 1.6 kilos) chuck roast, cut into 2 inch cubes.  Don’t remove too much fat, but do remove any tough connecting tissue

750 ml Burgundy wine, or another heavy red wine

1 large onion, diced

2 stalks of celery, thin sliced

2 medium sized tomatoes, seeds removed, blended into a purée

20 medium sized mushrooms, trimmed, washed, and quartered

4 large carrots, peeled and cut into thick chunks

2 cloves garlic, diced

4 slices streaky bacon, roughly chopped

2 heaping tablespoons of Bovril or another beef concentrate

1 heaping tablespoon herbs de Province (No H de P? Use thyme, parsley, bay leaves or just use your imagination…Hey!  You’re the Chef!)

olive oil, salt, pepper

1 cup water

Roux:  make a paste of two tablespoons of butter mashed into two tablespoons of flour.  This will be used to thicken the stew after it comes out of the oven.

You’ll also need:  a large heavy bottomed pot with a lid (Dutch oven).

Put the cubes of beef in a large bowl and pour in the entire bottle of wine.  Cover and let the beef marinate for a couple of hours.  Why?  Wine tenderizes.

Heat the oven to 250ºF  (130ºC)

Remove the beef from the bowl, but save the marinade.  Splash some olive oil in your large pot and brown the beef in batches.  I did it with three batches.  When the beef is browned, place it in a colander over a bowl (to catch the juices).

When all the meat is browned and removed, splash some more oil in the pot, then toss in the onions, garlic, celery, and bacon.  Cook at medium heat until the onions are wilted and beginning to turn amber.  Mix in the tomato purée, stir and cook only a few moments.

Return the beef to the pot and pour in the wine marinade and the dripping from the beef.  Bring to a boil and stir in the Bovril.  Add the cup of water.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

Put the top on the pot, slide it in the pre-heated oven and cook for about four hours.

At the three hour point, add the carrots and mushrooms.

I like my Burgy-Beef rich and thick, so after removing the stew from the oven, I put it back on the stovetop at low heat.  As it bubbles, I stir in the roux (paste) and cook the stew for a few minutes more, until thickened.

I like to serve this with plain mashed potatoes and as much wine as I can drink.  The French would also accompany the meal with slices of crusty baguette. The French don’t even brush their teeth without a baguette close by.

But wait….there’s just a bit more.   What does Bourgignon mean?  Well in English, we say Burgundy, but in French it ‘s Bourgogne.   And the French word Bourgignon (Boor-gig-yawn) comes out Burgundian in English.  Beef Burgundy style!  Voilá!

A votre santé!

browning the beef

sliced onions, celery, and finely diced garlic

tomato purée

draining the beef, but catching the juices in a bowl below the colander

I never make a beef stew or soup without the magic of Bovril