*originally posted on muckrakers blog Sept 9, 2007
I sit now in my kitchen and the waterworks are flowing. Eyes and nose wide open like a broken faucet. I decided today to try my hand at the creation of the perfect French Onion Soup. The main guide is Bourdain's Les Halles book, with a bit of extra guidance from Thomas Keller's Bouchon. As one puts it "French Onion Soup is, unsuprisingly, all about the onions", and right now I am halfway through the cutting of eight large onions. Can you smell me? It's ok, go ahead and say no just to make me feel better, but I'm probably going to have to fumigate my house and not be around anyone for a few days after this is all said and done.
I could be mistaken, but I think that the first time I had the dish was in Manhattan last week. It was odd because I sat down and immediately thought, Yes, That's what I want, when without realizing it, I had nothing to base that decision on. Maybe just the preconscious desire to have me some French Onion Soup. It turned out to be incredible and I remembered seeing it in a book I had, so here I am today.
Last night in the studio, Kyle had stopped by later in the evening, and probably somewhere past one he asked if we had heard the new Silverchair. A large group shaking of the head, and he pulls it up on his computer, plays the video for Straight Line and If You Keep Losing Sleep. Maybe it had been a long day, maybe I was tired and unexpecting something of worth, but it literally blew me away. Stood there with my mouth open, not believing what I was hearing. The strange but fantastic chord changes, the driving rhythm, the singer with a greater vocal range than I realized.
I stated at that point that I couldn't remember ever standing somewhere, watching and listening to something that was truly original and innovative.
I downloaded it this morning and if I have to cry, I might as well have something of this quality to make it better.
Check it out, but now the onions are calling out to be cut.
More to follow as it develops,
b
edit 1, 7:17 pm. Man this stuff takes a long time. I haven't even been able to add the stock yet, as the onions have yet to reduce and caramelize. By the way, Fletch was on tv this morning, which was funny because Rob and I were debating the merits or lack thereof between that movie and the sequel. The former is great, fantastic, hilarious. But Rob made the statement that the sequel was on par with Funny Farm. I immediately lost quite a bit of respect for our favorite front man at that point, since in spite of the title was most certainly not funny.
I'm getting hungry. More soon,
b
edit 2, 8:25 Did I mention this takes a long time? Caramelization has begun. I'm beginning to give up on eating tonight.
edit 3, 8:55 I wish I could import the smell of this, I'm so hungry and it smells sooo good. All ingredients in, being brought to a boil, then simmer for an hour. We'll see.
b
edit 4, 10:20 Soup for me. So good. So good. Happy now. I recommend.
Now go listen to Silverchair, or watch the video. Thanks for indulging me,
bsm
No comments:
Post a Comment