I love Regina Spektor’s videos — they’re always well-considered visually, and create intimate, beautiful spaces. This one’s no exception; it is a visual ode to the collected works of René Magritte, an artist whose work compliments the message of her song well.

As promised, here’s the almost vegetarian French onion soup recipe!

I started off with this Basic Vegetable Stock, which I let cook on the stove for a few hours:

3 Carrots (chopped)
2 Celery stalks (chopped)
1/2 cup Green Onions (as I was saving the white ones for the soup itself)
1/3 cup Parsley
3/4 cup dry Sherry
1 Bay leaf
a bouquet (about 8 sprigs) of Thyme
1 Tbsp. Peppercorns
1 Tbsp. Butter
About three quarts of water

While that was bubbling away on the stove, I roasted in a large casserole dish at 450° F:

1 medium Eggplant (cubed)
a dozen Cherry Tomatoes (each cut in half; they don’t have to be cherry tomatoes, it’s just what I had on hand)
a dash of Smokey-flavored Salt
1 Tbsp. Olive oil (just enough to coat the vegetables)

When the roasting vegetables had started to get brownish, I removed them from the oven. I removed the carrots and other vegetables from the stock pot, and added the roasted vegetables to it. The stock had already been a nice tan-ish color, but once I added the roasted vegetables, it started to get really dark. I let it go for awhile (probably an hour) and then came back to taste it. It was at this point that I took a page from one of my favorite Roald Dahl books (and that’s quite a competition!), and started moving around my kitchen, opening up my cupboards and pulling things out at random to see what I had that could go into it. It was clearly lacking something.

I added some spices (Herbs de Provençe, Basil, and a few Cloves), a bit more salt, and then the thing which made it taste almost-perfect but which also makes it not totally vegetarian: about two tablespoons of Worcestershire Sauce. It gave it a zing, a bite, and a lot of character, while the roasted vegetables gave it more substance than a regular vegetable broth generally has.

Full of hope that I’d created a good enough stock, I started in on the vegetables. First, I cooked the onions…

and then I cooked them some more…

And then finally started the actual assembly process: a slice of bread into the onion soup crock, then some of the onions, then the broth, and finally, about 3/4 of a cup of grated swiss cheese (I decided on a mixture of Gruyere, Emmentaler, Appenzeller) to completely cover the top. I baked it for just over 10 minutes at 450° F. Here’s the finished product, just prior to me digging in:

All in all, it was delicious, if I do say so myself. Was it beef stocky enough? Probably not. And I failed in my quest to make a totally vegetarian stock. On the other hand, it was extremely flavorful and added much to the soup that would not have been there if I’d gone with your average thin veggie stock. The butter gave the stock an oiliness and creaminess that was extremely appealing; the roasted eggplant made it seem meatier. It was an awful lot of work just to get to a bowl of onion soup, though, so I’d say if you’re going to bother going through all this, you should definitely make a large batch of stock. Luckily, I have quite a bit left, so all I really have to do is buy some more onions, and I’ll be in onion soup for a week or two!*

*(I also used the stock for a veggie-version of pho, which, I gotta tell you, was near-heavenly. Stock, rice noodles, bean sprouts, sliced green onions, mint, cilantro, basil, lime, and Sriracha sauce all came together for a very good cause.)

After reading a zillion different articles, recipes, and entire websites devoted to the idea that fondant is so hard to get right, I decided to just bite the bullet and do it. I didn’t put my fondant on a happily iced cake because I honestly didn’t have an occasion for cake-baking. I just wanted to play with fondant!

If I had had an occasion for fondant-making, it would have been for my mom’s recent birthday, or Mother’s Day. But she has been on a no-sugar diet. Still, the occasion made me think of possible ways to create a cake she’d love, and so I decided to go with her favorite fantastical animal: the dragon.

Ideally this little fella would be sitting on a pile of “gold” of some sort. I almost wanted to build some wacky construction of variously-sized mini, medi, regular, and humongous into a great big cupcake cake for him. If only I wasn’t so dreadfully terrified that any CCC invariably ends in wreckage.

There are tons of fondant recipes out there. Here’s the basic formula that I used, which is based on several different websites:

Fondant

3 Tbsp softened butter
3 Tbsp corn syrup
1/2 tsp anise extract (yep, I used anise. Next time I’ll probably go with almond for a pseudo-marzipan experience!)
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 lb sifted confectioner’s sugar
Food coloring as desired (for brighter colors, I’d say about 3-4 drops per 1/2 cup fondant).

1. Mix together the wet ingredients with a mixing paddle (not a whisk attachment!)
2. Slowly add sugar until it starts to look dry enough.
3. Keep mixing until it forms a lump around the mixing paddle. It shouldn’t be sticking to the sides of the bowl much.
4. Break off as much fondant as you need for each color. I rolled each ball of fondant up and then poked my finger into it to create a hole that went to the middle of the ball. Then I put the food coloring in the hole, closed it up, and kneaded it until it was a consistent color. (This didn’t take long.)

Have fun!

I have a problem. I love to cook, lots of food, and I haven’t got enough people to eat all the food I want to cook. I need more gastronomically-adventurous guinea pigs. And I like meeting new people.

July 11th, at one of Seattle’s parks (to be decided and announced), I’ll be serving a mid-afternoon picnic. With any luck the weather will hold.

I invite you: the first four Seattle-area replies I get. E-mail, Tweet me, comment, whatever. It’s okay if I’ve never met you before. It’s okay if I have. If you have specific food allergies or dietary restrictions, let me know. I’ll take into account all factors and construct some sort of menu that’ll fit your needs.

…who’s interested?

If you’re interested, but can’t make it, let me know — maybe I’ll do it again, and I’ll keep you in the loop. And please re-post or show this to friends you think would be up to it!

I love French onion soup. It’s been quite awhile since I had a real one, but I remember it, and it was gooood. Lately I’ve been longing for it, and looking up various onion soup recipes in an attempt to find (or develop) a great one. Here are some rules I’ve observed as factors in French Onion Soup appreciation:

1) Onions MUST be caramelized before they are added to the soup.
2) Selection of cheese and how it’s handled are as important as how the onions are handled.
3) Beef stock is the ONLY way to go; chicken, fish, and vegetable stock are useless.

…which leads me to my problem. I don’t do beef (or chicken, for that matter), so how can I pretend to make a real French onion soup? Beef stock isn’t just an excuse to call this a “soup,” it’s the foundation of the flavor of the soup. So whatever I do, it has to create a really tenacious, flavorful, beeflike stock.

An ordinary pretending-to-be-chicken stock simply won’t do for this. It has to be darker and meatier. I found a suggestion somewhere for a roasted vegetable stock, and I think that’s the way we’ll have to go. It needs to be oily and salty and sit mostly on the middle-back of the tongue. PROJECT: Vegetarian French Onion Soup will commence Thursday night, when I get my weekly delivery from Spud and will have the necessary vegetable ingredients. Here’s my gameplan:

Add to water UNROASTED:

Carrots
Celery
Fresh parsley
Fresh thyme
Dry sherry
Bay leaf

ROAST and add to water:

Crimini mushrooms (may also try a few portabellos)
Eggplant
Onion
Garlic
Olive oil

And when the stock’s prepared:

1) Toast a slice of some small baguette or peasant-style bread.
2) Caramelize the onions (I’ll have red and white).
3) Place ample amounts of onion over bread in onion-soup crock (I have one); add stock; add cheese; bake for 5-10 minutes.

I bought a variety of swiss-style cheeses from Whole Foods yesterday, including a Gruyere, an Appenzeller, a Tete de Moine, and an Emmentaler; I’m going to see which ones will go best with the onions. I’ve bought a LOT of onions and I’m planning to do the stock and then add additional vegetables to the stock, or other spices or flavors, until I get it right…

I’ll keep you up to date as I determine what works and what doesn’t in this experiment. Stay tuned!

(If you’re looking for some serious F.O.S. review power, check out Ron Schnell’s perfectly amazing French Onion Soup Page, where he travels around (mostly in the U.S.) tasting various French onion soups and seeking the perfect one.