Soup is always welcome in winter. I haven't made onion soup in quite some time and a confluence of ingredients made it an attractive choice. I started by slicing about four pounds of onions as thinly as I could and putting them in a pan with butter. I cooked the onions way, way down.
I then put them in a pot with beef stock and some apple juice to simmer.
I then put the soup in a bowl with bread crips and some Gruyere. I chose to make the cheese an accent rather than the thick mat that one often sees.
A couple of minutes under the broiler finished it off quite nicely. The apple juice's sweetness helped to balance the savoriness of the stock and onions. The cooked onions give the soup texture without making it anything other than soup. The blistering heat of the concoction encouraged me to enjoy it slowly.
I made candied ginger a few years ago. It's not something I would do every day but I had a lot of fun doing it. I recently acquired a pressure cooker and it inspired an interesting idea to me: why not make candied ginger in the pressure cooker? It should be very soft and flavorful. Here is the result. I peeled two large ginger roots, cut them into small cubes, and put them in the pressure cooker with heavily sugared water. The traditional method first boils the ginger in plain water to soften it and then again in sugar water to candy it. The resulting candy was very tender but still with the characteristic ginger texture. It was also sweet without being overpowering. The traditional method leaves a lot of sugar crystallized around the ginger. The pressure cooker gives a much more subtle result. The ginger stays moist even after it cools but you can dry it in the oven at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes. That inspired me to dip it in chocolate. While I was in the b...
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