Good morning. I sliced a few pounds of yellow onions into the slow cooker the other day, then plopped a chunk of butter the size of a baby’s fist on top of them and let the whole thing burble along for the better part of an afternoon. This made a nice base for a gravy I served on top of hamburgers seasoned with mustard powder, cayenne pepper, Worcestershire sauce, salt and black pepper, a hack of a recipe I saw in Melissa M. Martin’s new cookbook, “Bayou,” that pairs excellently with a watercress salad dressed in yellow-mustard vinaigrette.
The process got me on a caramelized onion kick. I stirred a bunch more around for a dinner of creamed mushroom bruschetta with caramelized onions. I made another batch to top this wonderful chicken with caramelized onion and cardamom rice.
And this weekend, I’m going to make yet more for this ace recipe for French onion soup (above) that’s been a part of The Times’s gastronomic universe since 1954, when it appeared under a humdinger of a headline: “Onion Soup a Delicious Dish; Vegetable Is Plentiful Now and Price Low.”
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French Onion Soup
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Yes, it takes a long time to caramelize the onions, longer than most folks care to admit. But on a chilly winter evening, it’s a pleasure sometimes to stand at the stove stirring the alliums, watching them melt into deep golden submission. Combine with a muscular beef broth thickened ever so slightly with flour, then top with slices of French bread and a shower of Gruyère. Broil until melty, then serve to applause, as if you’ve been running a brasserie in Montparnasse since the days of pay phones by the cloak room and ashtrays on the dinner table.
Other things to cook this weekend: brown stew chicken, a taste of the Caribbean, excellent with rice and peas and steamed cabbage dressed with spiced rum butter and scallions. Also, morning glory muffins for breakfast and tuna melts for lunch. I might try a winter squash and wild mushroom curry, too, and follow it with a golden ginger cake for dessert.
And is this a weekend for lasagna? It’s the middle of January, so, yes.
There are many thousands more recipes to cook in coming days waiting for you on New York Times Cooking. Go see what grabs your attention, then cook. (Yes, you need a subscription to do that. Subscriptions support our work and allow it to continue. If you haven’t already, will you please consider subscribing today? Thanks.)
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Now, it’s nothing whatsoever to do with picadillo or barberries, but I had a great time in the Wayback Machine recently, watching Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in “Key Largo.”
Likewise in the present, taking in the comedian Nate Bargatze’s new Netflix special, “Your Friend, Nate Bargatze.”
New fiction in The New Yorker: “Prophecy,” by Kanak Kapur.
Finally, in case you missed it over the holidays, here’s André 3000 performing in our newsroom after an interview with my colleagues Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli. What a cool thing that was to experience! I’ll see you on Sunday.
