“Crusted with cheese, golden at the edges. The waiter placed it carefully in front of me, and I broke through the top layer with my spoon and filled it with warm oniony broth, catching bits of soaking bread. The smell took over the table, a warmingness. And because circumstances rarely match, and one afternoon can be a patchwork of both joy and horror, the taste of the soup washed through me. Warm, kind, focused, whole.”
— Aimee Bender, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
Maybe it lies somewhere deep in my French heritage.
At my late father’s knee, he taught me to love onions. We were never without them: yellow, white, or green. Dad would spread butter over a slice of white bread, then top it with a thick hunk of white onion and eat it as an open-faced sandwich. Yellow onions went into soups and chili, which he happily made himself. Green onions were for chomping on along with radishes, washed down with a cold can of Olympia beer while reclining in the front yard overlooking the lake where we lived in Minnesota.
That’s how I confirm my French heritage, passed down from Grandpa to Dad to me: onions and butter coursing through my veins. While I don’t exactly have Dad’s hand-to-mouth devotion toward onions, I always cook with them.
French onion soup gratinée is still one of my favorite dishes to make.
