Good Shoes, Growing Up & French Onion Soup

Good Shoes, Getting Old & French Onion soup.

I visited my older brother last week, as he has just had a new baby, Evie, to add to our collection of cousins. In a rare moment when we weren’t dealing with screaming toddlers/newborns I commented on his shoes, which I had noticed were rather nice. Considering my brother (by his own admission) is one of the worst dressed men in history (he wore the same brown hoody from the age of 18 to about 37) I couldn’t help but notice his very smart, very tasteful, very grown up shoes. Soft suede boots, the right ankle height, with a nicely rounded toe and sturdy laces, in a natural grey/brown/greenish colour that Farrow and Ball would probably have called Irish Lichen or something similar.

‘Nice shoes’, I said, with all the creativity of the criminally tired.

He smiled coyly and I saw a strange light come into his eyes.

‘Aren’t they’, he said. Gently rocking back and forth on his heels like a proud toddler.

‘One of the great things about getting older is the huge amount of pleasure you get from having good stuff. I like a good pen. I like my coffee machine. I really LOVE my shoes. They make me happy’. His tired face glowed with a smile of childish joy.

*

I know what he means. On this visit to see him in France I had no grand intentions (I am, of course, extremely pleased that he ended up living here, because if he hadn’t done I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to regularly visit one of my favourite places) but I thought I might be able to go to a market, visit a brocante, eat many baguettes and at least a daily croissant. None of these things happened, because the weather was so foul leaving the house was a challenge and I was single parenting a flu-y and furious toddler. But I did buy a big pat of salty French butter and read possibly my most perfect blackboard menu outside a café in Narbonne. It said, quite simply; onion soup and hot chocolate. Just that. On that bitterly cold December day, with freezing rain lashing at our faces, I could think of no two nicer things. Being that we had already had lunch I ordered a hot chocolate, something I think I have not drunk for about 10 years because the occasion never seems to arise. Now it had. Nothing could have been more disappointing. It was watery, tepid, with a vaguely powdery texture. Even the colour was thin and depressing-looking. How can something so simple be done so badly?

It made me resolve to make a perfect hot chocolate and write it up here, because it is as important (if not more so) as a good pair of shoes. Simple Things Done Well, the title of a cookbook no one would ever pay me to write. A good hot chocolate, like good, grown up shoes, makes you happy.

Apart from a newfound appreciation of good shoes, the other thing I have found about getting older is how the small things become ever more important and enjoyable. When you are young, if you were anything like me, you spent your whole life fantasizing about the Big Things (Falling in Love, Writing a Book, Having a Family) and then as you get older and these Big Things actually happen to you (crazy), you realize that they are not Big Things at all, but small things eked out gradually over your hum drum every day, so that they lose their nebulous mystique and become entirely quotidian. Falling in Love becomes He Left his Wet Towel on the Floor, and Writing a Book morphs into Damn I Need to Write Another, and Having a Family mutates into Trying to Write a Book and Pick up Wet Towles House and Never Having Time to Have a Proper Shower again. Thus, inevitably, the big dreams shrink to small irks (smirks?) and the small things remain small but, thanks to life’s pale silver lining, they become increasingly satisfying. The satisfaction of a good hot chocolate, a warm bath, a perfect cup of tea, salty French butter, a good pair of shoes. These are the things that make up a life. And there is something rather reassuring about that. Because these things never go away, and are not often out of our control. We can all make ourselves a good hot chocolate, or an excellent onion soup. A good recipe, a good dish, even more so than a good pair of shoes (at least if you are meal-minded like me) can make an actual difference to our lives.

And so here, without further philosophizing, is a recipe for Good French onion soup, as a precursor for my recipe for a good hot chocolate. My brother's Good Grown up shoes, if you wondered, are available from Sorel.  

A Note

I have eaten a few good onion soups in my time, and as ever there are a few tricks to getting such a very simple recipe right.

1)    The onions must be cooked down until they become jammy. This will take a good amount of time and patience. It’s worth it.  

2)    The stock should really be home made. Sorry but see above about it being worth it.

3)    The onions themselves should be a nice, sweet variety if you can hold of them. Breton pale pink onions – specifically an elegant (yes onions can be elegant) variety called the Roscoff which come complete with their own pink sticker and AOP status – are the ultimate onion  if you can find them, I have once but forget where, and otherwise a shallot or Tropea or something similar. Of course the French have an AOP onion. Of course it is painfully chic to look at. I love France.

4)    The best one I have ever tasted was made by the son-in-law of my old boss Tom Jaine, who had been a chef with Alistair Little back in the day. I think, if I remember rightly, he made it with real Roscoff onions, brandy, and then either cider or red wine or both. It actually shimmered and was the colour of good roast beef, and it had a flavour and a sweet- savouriness so deep we drowned in it.

5)    Speaking of the booze element, it does help to have something slightly sweet, as it brings out the best in the onions. I’d say a cider and brandy mix would be lovely, or a red wine and splash of sweet sherry, or failing that a dash of port and then red wine. Something dry and winey, and then something slightly sweet too. I used Vernaccia and red wine and a splash of walnut balsamic which I brought back from Lagrasse. Some recipes call for a pinch of brown sugar, or a glug of standard balsamic. I leave to your discretion.

6)    DO NOT skimp on the cheesy toast topping. A good gruyere is obviously advised, but I used a nice pecorino and it was equally good. The salt is crucial to offsetting the agrodolce onions.

7)    The broth is a brown stock made from roasted marrow bones. You roast the bones alongside the other stock vegetable (leeks would also be good chunked in there but I had none). Leaving the skins on the onions as they roast helps add to the deep brown colour of the stock. You can easily get marrow bones from your butcher (often for free if you ask nicely) or at least for very little. They make amazing stock. I haven’t made a stock like this for a long time, but it was deeply satisfying.

Perfect (French) Onion Soup

French in parenthesis because I obviously made it at home here in Sardinia but it worked out nicely, and Lorenzo said it was basically ‘cipolle in agrodolce’ made into a soup. Trust an Italian to turn everything Italian. He is literally the Dad in My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

You can make this in advance and keep in the fridge or freeze until you need it.

For the beef broth

500g marrow bones

2 carrots, chunked

2 onions (taken from above kilo) in their skins and haklved lengthways

3 sticks of celery, cut into chunks

2 bay leaves

Parsley (if you have it, a sprig or two)

Roast the bones, carrot and celery chunks and halved onions in a high oven until browned (about 40 mins to an hour).

Add them to a stock pot/deep saucepan covering them with 2 litres cold water and adding the bay leaves and parsley. Simmer over a low heat until reduced by half and dark brown (at least an hour).

For the Soup

80g French (if you can find it) butter

A few sprigs of thyme

1kg onions (the remaining 800g or so of onions after you have taken a couple out for the stock)

40g plain flour

Half a bottle of red wine/cider (see notes above about the alcohol element)

2 small glasses of aged Vernaccia, or sweet sherry, or port, or 1 glass of brandy  

Salt and pepper   

The above broth, reduced down to 1 litre

A splash of sweet vinegar or a pinch of brown sugar (optional)

A few slices of crusty bread, toasted

A chunk of gruyere or cheese of your choice, grated

Slice the onions as finely as you can.

Melt the butter in a heavy saucepan (a casserole pot is good if you have one) over a very low flame and add the onions and thyme. Sweet, very gently, stirring frequently, for about 2 hours (mine took more or less the whole morning, on and off as I did other jobs around them. You need at least one hour of caramelisation, preferably more) until they form a camel-coloured puree/sort of onion jam.

Add the flour and cook over a medium heat for a few minutes. Now add the booze and cook over a high heat for a few minutes.

Finally, add the stock and cook, over a medium low heat for about 30-40 minutes, until reduced a little, glossy and deep brown. Season with salt and pepper to taste and your vinegar/sugar if using.

Toast the bread, place on top of the soup and then add lots of grated cheese on top. At this point you can place briefly under the grill to melt the cheese nicely but I don’t own a grill. C’est la vie. I compensated with extra cheese. Alternatively roast the cheesy toasts in the oven likle bruschetta.