Honey's French Onion Soup

Second go-round for me on the Soup Swap, but this time it crept up on me. Pre-occupied with being a brand-new realtor, and exhausted from the endless walking, I needed a recipe that was not-too-elaborate. Something I wouldn't have to stand up too long to make. Also, something not too Winter-y (weather's changing!) and yet not Spring-y, either. I'm from South Louisiana, where it's not only Spring already, but also Mardi Gras season. Parades, family get-togethers, costumes, beads, funny floats, excitement... I'm deeply homesick right now. While pondering my family & what I was missing, I hit upon making my grandmother's French Onion soup.

We called my mother's mother 'Honey', because that's what my grandfather called her. One of us kids picked that name up & it stuck. She was a fabulous cook, known for her crawfish bisque (took days to make, starting with live crawfish in the bathtub), shrimp etouffee, cornbread, and this soup. I got her to tell me the recipe over 35 years ago, and have made it almost every winter since then. It involves vermouth, molasses, and a lot of black pepper. Like, make-your-nose-run-it-has-so-much black pepper. But it's fairly quick to make.

Besides picking out a soup, one of the hardest things about Soup Swap is figuring out how much to cook for 8+ people. Technically, you only HAVE to make enough for 7 people, but of course I want plenty of leftovers. My first Soup Swap venture, the calculations I figured for my old "little of this & that" pozole recipe barely made enough for the promised 7 quarts. This time would be different. About half-way through chopping (by hand!) the 7 pounds of onions, I was already sorry I was making so much. But I cried my way through it.

Then I discovered it was verrrry different to make this recipe in bulk than the usual way. Tons of onions don't 'smother' down easily in one pot! ('Smothering' is a Southern term for cooking onions until they're limp.) I broke it all up into 4 different pots, then threw it together into a big gumbo pot at the end. Put sliced French bread and grated parmesan & gruyere into baggies. Added what I HOPED was enough black pepper to be true to the recipe, but mindful that Yankees can't take that much heat. Made a funnel from tin foil & filled my soup swap jars.

Hope the Soup Group likes it. I recommend eating it, as I cooked it, while listening to Mardi Gras music: Iko-Iko, Big Chief, Carnival Time, and Mardi Gras Mambo are the classics. Put on some bright & shiny beads. And if you dare, put in an extra grind of black pepper, the way Honey liked it.