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.

I feel like I owe Bea at La Tartine Gourmande a link, because I have started stealing, and thoroughly enjoying, recipes that she’s posted. I’ve been on a Foodie Blog kick lately, and hers is my favorite. Her recipes range from fairly easy to oh-so-very fancy, and the photography is delightfully tasty.

Last night I made the Bohemienne, which is quite a bit like Ratatouille, but simpler, and lighter. And, my goodness, it was tasty! I didn’t have rustic bread, but I did have a failed French bread experiment (it tasted fine, it just wasn’t quite so light and airy as French bread ought to be). So I diced and turned that into garlic croutons, and put them atop the Bohemienne. It was a very hearty thing to have on a cold snowy night, and I’m sure I’ll be enjoying the leftovers all week.

A little over a week ago, I made a dinner of her Fennel Salad (though I left out the beets, and used blueberries, which are in season, rather than cherries) and Sole Roulades, both of which were terrific. Next time, though, I’ll slice the fennel a bit thinner… and also check the fish with a thermometer instead of just assuming the inside was done just because the outside was.

Next on my to-cook list from Bea are the Potato Nests with Avocado and Smoked Salmon. And I can’t wait to see her cookbook.

With all these foodie blogs a-stewin’ in my brain, it’s fairly inevitable that I would start spewing out some recipes myself. Here’s one I tried out a few days ago:

Risotto with Roasted Red Pepper and Goat Cheese
(Serves 4)

1 cup Arborio rice
2 cups vegetable broth
1 yellow onion, diced
1 cup sliced roasted red bell pepper (I used the kind that comes in a jar and can be found next to the pepperoncini at the market, but you could roast them yourself)
6 oz goat cheese, broken into chunks the size of cherries.
2 Tbs butter
3 Tbs raw pine nuts
3 Tbs olive oil

1. Start by combining the butter, rice, and onions in a large saucepan on high heat. Stir until the onions are cooked (but not browning) and the rice is looking a nice golden color.
2. Slowly add the broth, stirring as you go. Allow the rice to cook for about 20-25 minutes, but keep stirring so that it doesn’t stick. Once the rice is cooked, turn the heat to low.
3. Add the bell pepper, and stir so that it is warmed.
4. Heat the olive oil in a small frying pan on high heat. Roast the pine nuts, making sure to keep them moving. This happens faster than you might think. As soon as they are looking a roasted-brown color, add them to the risotto.
5. Take the risotto off the heat, and add the goat cheese. Stir as little as possible. Enjoy!

I’m contemplating adding a bit of lemon juice, and perhaps some tarragon to this mix. We ate it alongside salmon with a mesquite rub and a great Pinot Noir, which went quite well with the pine nuts in the risotto.

I’m also mulling over some sort of pasta concoction involving Drunken Goat cheese and almond slivers. I’ll let you know how it goes.

…is the last one. Or anyway, that’s how it was for me.

Steven Delopoulos, interestingly enough, via Drawn!—where they linked to a pretty music video of a song by the same guy.

Go to his website and fill out the little thing to download the songs. They are PRETTY.