Saturday, April 13, 2013

Mid-Century Madness French Onion Soup!

Well hello! It's been a while, hasn't it? That's what happens when you end up with deadlines, another blog, and a personal trainer who means business: you end up letting something go.

Anyways, I return with mid-century madness!

Have you heard about the Mid-Century Menu blog? It's basically this chick who makes food from her ancient cookbooks and let's her husband taste-test them. What's most interesting about the blog is that as they eat more and more of these hideous concoctions, the less and less they find them revolting. 

As I read the blog, it occurred to me that I don't have to try mid-century recipes from ancient Good Housekeeping and Family Circle magazines because I can just go over to visit my parents and eat my mom's food to experience mid-century madness.

No yolks, thanks to my mom's nameless ex-boyfriend.
Case in point: French Onion Soup. My mom made French Onion Soup over Easter weekend. She even made them in the individual little pots that she got when she got married in 1972. And of course my mom told her French Onion Soup Story as she served it. It wouldn't be French Onion Soup if it weren't accompanied by the French Onion Soup Story.

Here's how it goes: A long, long time ago, in 1965 or so, my mom found a recipe for French Onion Soup in some magazine. It called for an egg yolk emulsified in the broth and some kind of bizarre spice mix (which probably accounts for the ancient bottle of marjoram that resided at my grandparents' place). She went home and made it for her family and it was a big hit. Everyone loved it and she made it for many years.

Then one day some nameless boyfriend of hers took her to a fancy French restaurant for dinner and my mom had French Onion Soup. My mom said that she was amazed that this simple onion soup was so good. So she went home and tried French Onion Soup without the yolk and without the spices (but keeping the bread and gratin). It was an even bigger hit! And she's been making it this way til this day.

If it weren't enough that my mom pulled out her onion soup bowls, she also gave me a mid-century-madness-coloured espresso cup set for Xmas (which she only ended up giving me at Easter, but that's an entirely different story). Seriously, each cup-and-saucer in the set is a different mid-century-madness colour: mustard yellow, dark powder blue, burnt orange, etc. 

Of course my favourite cup is the avocado green one: