Soupe à l'oignon gratinée

Last week we went out to do some errands in Saint-Aignan. We stopped chez Ed to pick up a few grocery items. In the produce section, Ed had five-kilogram bags of onions for 0.85 € — 85 cents. That was too good to pass up — twelve pounds of onions for about a dollar U.S. So we've had to think up creative ways to cook onions, or to cook with onions. Last Friday, we made onion and potato pizzas, with lardons and gruyère cheese. Those were a success. We also figured we could cook the onions and freeze them for later use. This is the kind of stuff you find really exciting when you don't work for a living.


Today we made soupe à l'oignon. That was a success too. Since Collette's illness back in November, we've been feeding her cuisses de dinde — turkey legs — that we buy chez Ed or elsewhere and that I usually poach in water and then cut up into small chunks for the dog's breakfast. The side benefit of that poaching process is broth — good turkey broth that we can make into soups, cook rice in, or use to make sauces. Yesterday I cooked another cuisse de dinde for Collette, so there was a liter of fresh broth in the refrigerator.


Onion soup is pretty easy. You thinly slice a pound and a half of onions (that's 750 grams). You sauté them quickly in some butter and oil, and then you turn down the heat, add a good pinch of salt and a teaspoon of sugar, and let them stew in their own juices for 45 minutes or even an hour at a very low temperature, until the onions are caramelized, golden, and soft. At that point you stir a tablespoon of flour into the onions and let that cook for a couple of minutes.


Then you pour in 2 liters (that's 2 quarts) of water or, in my case, turkey broth, and you let the soup cook for 30 minutes or so. You can use vegetable broth, chicken broth, or beef broth if you want. Put in a bay leaf, some black pepper, and a pinch of dried thyme to flavor it well, and add a good glug (say half a cup) of dry white wine. Once it reaches the boiling point, turn down the heat and let it just simmer. When it's cooked, taste it and see if it needs more salt.

Voilà. Soupe à l'oignon. You can strain out the onions and eat it that way if you want. Or eat it with the onions floating in the soup.

What makes it really good, though, is the gratinée part. To do that, pour the soup into individual oven-proof bowls or into one big oven-proof dish. Take thick slices of dry (not to say stale) French bread and float them on the surface of the soup. Put a good layer of grated Swiss cheese (a.k.a. gruyère or comté or emmenthal) — or other cheese if you like — on top of the bread slices, which should pretty much cover the surface of the soup. Put the bowls of soup into a hot oven for 15 minutes or more, until the soup is bubbling and the cheese is melted and starting to browned. Don't burn it!




Take it out of the oven and let it cool for a few minutes before you try to eat it. You'll burn the roof of your mouth if you aren't careful. C'est délicieux. Especially on a cold winter day.

So let's see. Onion pizza used up a pound of onions. Today's soupe à l'oignon used close to two pounds. We have nine pounds to go. Any other ideas? Onion omelets, somebody said. Pissaladière (that's an onion tarte with black olives that they make in Provence and in Nice). Deep-fried onion rings? Sauce soubise? Help me out here.