French Onion Soup

French onion soup can be either really great or really not so great and it all depends on the quality of ingredients. Imagine how hollow it could be if the stock was made from a bullion cube, the bread was a slice of HFCS laden supermarket “French bread” and the whole thing was topped with a waxy, mass-produced domestic “Swiss” cheese (I’m going to sound like a total cheese snob here, but there are hundreds of different types of cheese that come from Switzerland. There is not just one “Swiss Cheese”. There. I said it.), rather than an authentic Gruyere? The soup would be thin and over-salted, the bread would turn to an algae-like substance and the cheese would form a tough skin when broiled, rather than melting and mingling.

Fortunately, it’s not prohibitively expensive or difficult to find quality ingredients for French Onion soup, and it makes a world of difference in the end result.

This recipe calls for homemade beef stock, a good baguette with a thick crisp crust and open crumb, and a good authentic Gruyere cheese. If you live in an area with good artisan cheese makers, you may be able to find an local equivalent to Gruyere, but be sure to test it out first to see if it works. Sometimes cheeses can become stringy when added to soup and that makes for a less appetizing appearance and texture.

To get a light essence of garlic into the soup, burnish the bowl and toast with a halved piece of garlic. This combined with dry white wine, good cheese and French bread makes this soup reminiscent of a good fondue.

French Onion Soup – Serves 2

3 yellow onions, quartered and sliced
2 T butter
1 dash of salt (or 3 grinds from salt grinder)
1 t brown sugar
1 T flour
1/2 C dry white wine
4 C beef stock
2 – 4 thick (1/2 – 1 inch) slices of French bread
1 clove of garlic, peeled and cut in half
4-6 ounces Gruyere cheese, grated

Melt butter in a large stockpot. Add onions and cook over medium-low heat until creamy and softened, about 10 minutes. Add brown sugar and continue cooking until golden brown, 20 more minutes on medium-low. Stir in flour, being sure to evenly coat the onions and cook 10 minutes, still on medium-low heat.

Increase heat to medium-high and add wine. Stir to blend the wine with the onion and flour paste, scraping up the bottom of the pan to deglaze. Stir in beef stock and allow to simmer for 30 minutes. Occasionally skim any foam from the top and stir.

Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Toast the pieces of bread – depending on the thickness of the baguette, you may need two toasts per bowl. Rub the toasts and oven-proof soup crocks with raw garlic.

Divide the finished soup into two crocks, float toast on top and cover with grated Gruyere. Place soup crocks in the oven and bake for 15-20 minutes, until cheese reaches desired level of meltiness. This could range from just bubbling to browned.

Blue Cheese and Salami Baked Penne

I felt like having a hearty comfort-food type lunch today, and so I decided to make baked penne with salami in the sauce and pecorino romano and blue cheese (for a nice melty effect) on top.

The result was a satisfying combination of flavors. The sweetness of the tomato sauce combined with the occasional peppery cube of salami worked nicely with the blue cheese from Jasper Hill Farm, an artisanal cheese maker in Vermont. I’d tried Constant Bliss, their mold-ripened cheese last summer and I was impressed, so I picked up their Bayley Hazen Blue yesterday at the natural market. The flavor is unlike any blue cheese I’ve tasted. It’s mellow and strong at the same time, without being overly salty. Perfect for this dish.

I’d gotten the salami at the a new conventional grocery store in town. My husband and I decided to check it out, despite having a Pollan-esque disdain for conventional supermarkets. I was checking out their cheese selection and ended up reading the labels of a couple of their salami for nitrates. I love salami, but it’s very difficult to find good salami, especially nitrate-free salami. It had been a while since I’d had any salami though and I was tempted, since this was made without nitrates. The flavor turned out to be a little too sweet and the texture too rubbery on it’s own though, which was why I thought maybe I’d throw it in with the sauce. Melt some of the fats and into the sauce and cut the sweetness with the tomatoes’ acidity. I like to use a gratin dish because it’s shallow and results in more cheese per bite.

Blue Cheese and Salami Baked Penne – serves 4

1 T olive oil
1 clove of garlic, pressed
2 C tomato, diced
1/4 C scallion, chopped
2 T tomato paste
1/4 C chicken or vegetable stock
1/2 C diced salami
1/4 C pecorino romano
1/4 C blue cheese, crumbled (I prefer to crumble it myself rather than buy it crumbled, which I find dry)
2 C dried penne, ziti or your favorite short pasta

Pre-heat oven to 350. Cook pasta as directed, drain, rinse or toss with olive oil, if desired.

Heat olive oil in a saucepan over medium heat. Add garlic and scallions and cook one minute. Do not let it brown. Stir in tomato paste. Add stock, tomatoes and salami. Allow to simmer for 10 to 15 minutes.

Pour pasta into a shallow baking dish, pour sauce over pasta, turning with a large spoon or spatula to coat the pasta. Top evenly with cheese and bake for 15 minutes.