Friday, October 11, 2002

Hey kids.  It’s Eric’s Spicy Thursday, we’re thinking of making it a regular thing, maybe add a webcam later on.  Eric provides me with some edible heat, and I have the leisure to catch up and reflect.  Tonight we have Wolfman Jack Burgers and Tostitos. Wolfman Jack Burgers© are the creation, so far as we know, of Hut’s, the best burger joint in creation, conveniently located on sixth street in Austin, Texas.  I will confess that memory has faded a bit, so what Eric’s making is more a Proustian recollection of Wolfman Jack Burgers©.  (Some of you will recall that a perfectly gorgeo-mous C-list movie star once left me a voice message in which he used the word “Proustian” to bone-melting, yet pretentious, effect a few years ago.  Now every time I use or hear the word, I remember that episode with fondness and just a tad of erotic frisson.  But I digress.)  Our Wolfman Jack is this: burgers cooked under a broiler and topped with Monterey jack cheese, canned green chiles and sour cream.  Austinites out there with more accurate memories than ours would do well to speak up at this point. But that is not why I’m here.  I’m here to discuss Soupe a l’Oignon.  Onion soup. Not that there’s a whole lot to discuss, in terms of technique or anything like that.  I know y’all get bored of me saying this, but this is a hell of an easy dish.  It just takes a little time. I started by slicing 5 cups of onions.  In my Cuisinart.  Have I mentioned, Hallelujah, Cuisinart?  Not only is it fast, but it is fast like you WOULD NOT BELIEVE when you attach the slicing blade.  Ho-lee shit.  I’m telling you, three minutes, tops.  Un-be-fucking-lievable.  All these wonders of the, er, twentieth century just blow my mind.  Then I dump those sliced onions in with some butter and oil and cook them slowly, covered, for 15 minutes.  I add some salt and sugar (helps with the browning, says Julia), and cook for 40 minutes.  40 minutes of pure caramelized onion.  This stuff, at the end of the time, is more or less ambrosial.  (Except don’t you think of ambrosia as sweet?  I mean , it must be sweet, right, like it’s honey?  And yet when I think of food of the gods, I think bacon.  Or, as it turns out, caramelized onions.) At the end of the 40 minutes the onions are beautifully brown, and smell like.  Mm.  Onions.  Then I stir in some flour and let that thicken for a few minutes before I beat in some plain old beef stock and vermouth.  That cooks for another 40 minutes.  Then stir in some cognac.  I put toasted, garlic-rubbed slices of bread in the bottom of the soup bowls and pour the soup over.  Good stuff.  Eric’s got a problem with croutons (don’t ask, I don’t get it), so he’s got something of a problem with the soup.  Actually, now that you mention it, I guess I can understand not liking soggy bread in your soup.  But it’s soggy with onions, so how bad could it be?  I can just imagine how good this would be with homemade beef stock, but then I can’t imagine making homemade beef stock, so there you have my failure of the imagination. We seem to be doing a two-course thing.  I haven’t been talking about it, but I’ve been all this time making a veloute sauce.  This has become more or less part of the routine by this time – flour and butter roux, chicken stock beat in.  To turn it into Sauce Chivry, I’ve simmered some vermouth with shallots and dried tarragon, and strained that into the veloute, then stirred a dollop or two of butter and some chopped parsley.  I know I should be using fresh tarragon, but Western Beef doesn’t carry such amenities, and I do have this very high-grade, oh-so-gourmet dried stuff that Eric’s mom gave me.  Very tarragon-y.  Besides, Julia says it’s alright, so fuck you, foodies. JC says I can serve Sauce Chivry with poached chicken, so I do.  JC doesn’t actually give instructions for poaching chicken, so I just make something up – throw a chicken into a pot with water and a bit of vermouth, and celery and bay leaf and onion (no carrot, I’m all out), and simmer it for awhile.  Like boiling a chicken only slower and for not as long.  I let the chicken continue to boil down while we eat our second course of Poulet Pôche avec Sauce Chivry.  (I don’t know if that’s actually how you say poached chicken, but I love inserting those cute little letters.) The sauce tasted like tarragon alright.  I’m still a little dubious about chicken.  That’s probably a deeply imbedded irrational childhood based on my mother’s abhorrence of the herb.  I don’t know.  Anyway, it was good over the chicken.  I really ought to have taken the time to de-bone the chicken and sliver it into smaller chunks and serve it over a bed of rice, but I didn’t.  Sue me.  Back to Thursday, the Wolfman Jack Burgers© were excruciatingly good.  I had two.  I’m a worthless pig.  Ah well.  Thank you Eric.  The only thing missing was some Religious Experience© hot sauce.  Anyone who finds some Religious Experience© hot sauce would do well to send me some, or to apprise me of its location. Tomorrow – dinner party in a hellhole.  Stay tuned. 7:28:13 AM    comment []