Chocolate Gravy

 

What was your reaction when you read the words chocolate gravy?  If it was, "Ohmygawd, YES!!!", I'm guessing you're from the South.  If it was, "Whaaaa?", then you're probably from north of the Mason-Dixon line, at least in a cultural sense.  If you're in the perplexed group, let me enlighten you.

My husband's family is mostly from Oklahoma originally, and then eventually settled in Arkansas.  They have taught me some interesting things about food with a Southern influence--some of which I've liked (like this chocolate gravy), and some I didn't care for (like hominy casserole and pickled okra).  Luckily, my father-in-law keeps plenty of good Scotch around to wash down the stuff I don't like.  

When we would all meet up in Arkansas near my in-law's house, sometimes Marc and I and my sister-in-law's family would go out for breakfast at a little diner right by Bull Shoals Lake called Connie's.  This was always a really special treat.  On one particular trip to Connie's my sister-in-law, Leah, ordered chocolate gravy, and I almost gagged when the words came out of her mouth.  The only gravy I had ever eaten at breakfast was sausage gravy, and when my brain tried to imagine chocolate gravy, I envisioned some kind of horrible half sweet, half savory abomination of chocolate and sausage together.  She quickly corrected me and said, "it's like eating warm chocolate pudding for breakfast."  Turns out, eating warm chocolate pudding for breakfast is a-ok with me.  Thank goodness Leah was there to school me.  And thank goodness not all Southern food tastes like pickled okra.

Chocolate Gravy

3/4 cups sugar

1/3 cups cocoa  (I highly recommend Dutch-processed cocoa; I like Penzey's brand)

3 Tbs. flour

4 Tbs. (1/2 stick) butter

2 cups milk (whole milk is best)

1 tsp. vanilla extract

pinch of salt

Whisk the sugar, cocoa and flour together in a bowl and set aside.  Melt the butter in a nonstick skillet over medium heat.  Add the cocoa mixture to the skillet and stir until well mixed with the melted butter.  Cook for a minute or so to let the cocoa bloom.  Slowly whisk in the milk and turn up the heat.  Cook, stirring or whisking constantly, until thickened.  Off heat, stir in the vanilla and salt.  Serve warm over biscuits.

Two Spice Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

I don't know about your house, but around here, it's canning time.  This past weekend we made our yearly batch of seasoned tomato sauce, I'm getting ready to do salsa, and tomorrow I need to buy some peaches to try out jam or possibly peach butter.  I'm totally inspired now that we have (and I know how to use) a pressure canner.  We've actually had it for about a year, but I'm not gonna lie, I was scared of it.  Steam is a scary thing.  Steam inside of a closed vessel building up pressure is much scarier still.  When I worked at the military academy at West Point, for our mechanical engineering program we had a steam lab that filled up an entire room and powered light bulbs, and I didn't even like walking in that room when the thing was running.  I always envisioned it blowing up without warning, shards of light bulbs and steaming pipes flying.  Same deal with the pressure canner.  It doesn't matter that the thing has multiple safety mechanisms and redundancies, an exploding pot with burning hot jar fragments slicing through the air was all I could think of.  Luckily my husband is very brave.  Maybe because he has been shot at and I never have.  Or maybe because he has 3 older sisters who tormented the hell out of him growing up.  (My money's on the latter.)  Whatever the reason, he fearlessly took on the pressure canner, and he won.  And you know what?  It was pretty anti climactic.  But now I know how to use it, and I'ma be a canning fool.

I figured old timey books would be filled with preserves, jams, jellies and the like.  They were, but while flipping through one of them, an old, yellowed newspaper clipping fell out and landed in my lap.  It said Two Spice Cake, and I said, hells yeah.  It had been quite a while since I sent any goodies with Marc to work, so I decided to put the canning adventures on momentary hold.  After all, cake goes over better for a meeting than jars of peach butter.  

This recipe was tucked inside the pages of one of the books I got from my grandma Marguerite, and was dated December, 1964.  The only spices it had were cinnamon and ground cloves, both of which I love, so I was instantly intrigued.  Spice cake that relies on the "everything but the kitchen sink" mixture of spices can be delicious too, but I liked the idea of letting those two basic ingredients take center stage.  The recipe at its core seemed sound, so the only tweaking I did was to add salt and vanilla and adjust the mixing method a bit.  The 1964 version was also baked in a tube pan and then dusted with powdered sugar.  I opted for adapting it to cupcakes and then crowned them with a delicious (and lovely) cinnamon flecked cream cheese frosting.  

Ok, enough slacking off with cake.  Time to work on that salsa....

Two Spice Cupcakes

This recipe makes 24 cupcakes.  I used a #24 portion scoop heaping full of batter to fill the pan.

3 cups all purpose flour

1 tsp. baking soda

1 Tbsp. ground cloves

1 Tbsp. ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp. salt

1 cup buttermilk, room temperature

2 tsp. vanilla extract

1 cup butter (2 sticks), well softened

2 1/4 cups granulated sugar

5 eggs, room temperature

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line two 12-cup muffin tins with cupcake papers, or grease and flour the pans very well, if you're so inclined.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, cloves, cinnamon and salt.  Set aside.  Whisk the vanilla into the buttermilk and set aside.

In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar together with an electric mixer on medium speed until very fluffy, about 3 to 5 minutes.  Add in the eggs one at a time and mix well after each addition.  Add in about 1/3 of the flour mixture with your mixer on low speed.  Mix in half of the buttermilk mixture, followed by another 1/3 of the flour, the remaining buttermilk and then the remaining flour, stopping to scrape down the bowl as necessary.  Keep your mixer at low speed or you may get a flour facial.

Evenly divide the batter amongst the 24 cups in the pans; you will be filling them fairly full, close to the top of the cupcake paper.  As I mentioned above, a portion scoop is nice here.  Bake for approximately 20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted comes out with a few crumbs attached, rotating the pans about halfway through baking.  Cool cupcakes in the pans for about 10 minutes, then remove them and put them on a cooling rack.  Once they are completely cool a few hours later, you can finish them with the cream cheese frosting or frosting of your choice.

Cream Cheese Frosting

12 oz. cream cheese, well softened (this is 1 1/2 of the traditional block size)
6 Tbs. butter, well softened (3/4 of a stick)
2 tsp. vanilla extract
2 cups powdered (confectioner's) sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon (optional)

With an electric mixer, beat the cream cheese and butter together and then mix in the vanilla.  With your mixer on low speed, mix in the sugar and cinnamon until creamy and slightly fluffy.  Try not to eat the entire bowl before you can get it on the cupcakes.  Enjoy!

 

Cream of Tomato Soup

Remember when I said I would revisit the idea of cream of tomato soup in the near future?  Yeah, neither do I, because it's been that long ago.  Well, I'm finally revisiting it, and what better time than now, when many of us home gardeners are in full tomato harvesting mode.

This summer has been very kind to my garden.  Last year by this time I think we had already had at least a dozen days over 100 degrees and were in the middle of a drought that made the corn field behind my house look drier than last season's bird's nest.  This year, however, cool, wet weather has made it so easy to tend my garden that I have barely had to water it myself at all.  The hardest part has been keeping the weeds under control.  And the crop has been fabulous, with plenty more green fruit hanging on and just waiting to ripen and be picked.  If grape tomatoes could be an investment, Marc could probably drop his retirement paperwork today.  There are so many, it's laughable.

Speaking of laughable, you should see how many roma tomatoes I planted.  I was so happy with the tomato sauce that I canned last year that I went all out for maximum sauce making production.  It ought to be comical because the bulk of that harvest will probably come in right around the time that I am having our first baby and learning how to be a new mom.  I hope Marc is up for making sauce without me.  I can just imagine me sitting on the couch feeding the baby while I yell across the room to him, "Ok, now peel the garlic, the papery part.  No, that's an onion, not garlic."  I kid, he's not that bad.  And actually, he does most of the work on canning day.  He just prefers not to prepare the product itself that is being canned.

But back to cream of tomato soup....

Our ancestors loved cream of fill-in-the-blank soup.  You name it, they ate cream of it.  And from what I can tell, "cream of" whatever just means that they made a soup out of the whatever and then added cream or milk.  Seems like an odd use of syntax to me, but what do I know?  There are numerous recipes for cream of tomato in my ancient books.  One called for "sifting" the tomatoes, which still has me scratching my head.  I took suggestions from some of them, but many were SO heavy on the dairy that it seemed to me the tomato flavor would be completely dull.  So for the most part this is another one of those recipes where I pretty much did my own thing and put lots of ideas together.  It turned out great on the first try, which ranks it right up there with peach pandowdy as one of the recipes I am most proud of.  Topped with some homemade croutons, it is the perfect little summer meal, and will make you so glad you grew those tomatoes.  Or at least bought some from the farmer who did.

Cream of Tomato Soup

Use a traditional pot, not nonstick, so you can develop some good fond.  Or an enameled Dutch oven, which is what I usually use.  Scoop the seeds out of the tomatoes and then weigh them; this is very important or you will be short on tomatoes.  (Unless you don't mind seeds in your soup!)  Leave the skins on, because when you blend it all up it will make a nice consistency.  As written this makes about 4 very hearty servings or maybe 6 servings if you're pairing it with a salad or a grilled cheese or something, but it's very easy to double as well.


2 lbs. tomatoes, cored, cut into quarters and seeds removed
4 Tbs. butter
2 tsp. oil
1 onion, chopped
1 carrot, chopped
1 celery rib, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 Tbs. tomato paste
1/4 cup flour
1 Tbs. brown sugar
1 (32 oz.) box vegetable broth--I like Swanson brand best
1 bay leaf
1/4 cup heavy cream
1 Tbs. brandy, optional but delicious!

Melt the butter in a heavy pot until the foaming settles down.  Add tomatoes to the hot butter and make sure one of the cut sides is down, not the skin side.  They will not all fit in one layer, so make sure to rotate them around so all of them are cut down side on the bottom of the pot for a while.  Cook for quite a while until tomatoes are fairly dry and you have a nice fond in your pot.  This took me about 20 minutes, as I recall.  And pay attention to your stove.  Mine has a really high output so I needed a fairly low heat to keep from burning the fond.  Remove tomatoes and set aside.

Add oil to the pot and heat until the oil is shimmering.  Add the chopped onion, carrot and celery and a sprinkling of salt.  Cook until the vegetables are well softened, scraping up fond as the veggies release their moisture.  This will take about 5 minutes or so over medium heat.

Add garlic and tomato paste and cook until tomato paste has darkened slightly, about 2 minutes.  Add flour and sugar and cook about another 2 minutes.  If there is still a lot of fond on the bottom of the pot, pour in a little bit of broth and deglaze the pan, scraping up the fond with a wooden spoon.  Slowly pour in the remaining broth while stirring to keep the flour from getting lumpy (I actually prefer to do this part with a whisk, not a spoon).   Add bay leaf and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes.  Remove the bay leaf and add back the tomatoes.  Use an immersion (stick) blender to blend the soup completely, then add the cream and gently heat through.  Off heat, stir in brandy and season to taste with salt and pepper.  I garnished mine with chives and homemade croutons.

Croutons

4 slices hearty sandwich bread, cubed
2 Tbs. butter, melted
salt and pepper to taste

Heat oven to 400 degrees.  Toss the bread in the melted butter and sprinkle with salt and pepper.  Spread in a single layer on a baking sheet and bake for approximately 10 minutes, stirring a time or two.  Remove from the oven and let cool so they can crisp up.  Also remember that things tend to brown slightly more after you remove them from the oven.  You could also add other seasonings as desired, like garlic powder, or Penzey's Sandwich Sprinkle works great.  Let cool so they can crisp up.

Gumbo Z’herbes

In but a few short months, it will be spring in Chicago (no I am not kidding with that). Time to start thinking about how big your ass has gotten over the winter and maybe dream about a place that is actually warm at this time of year. So we're going to New Orleans for some gumbo. I know, gumbo doesn't normally strike one as being healthy, but despite the butter this one comes in at around 300 calories a serving. And it's delicious.

I put chicken thighs in pretty much everything I cook, so if you want the original, vegetarian recipe, head over to Chow. Also I have issues with green peppers so I use red, but you can pick your own poison there. A nice scoop of rice on top is heavenly, but completely optional.

Gumbo Z’herbes

• 1/3 cup butter
• 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 1 red peppers, chopped
• 3 ribs celery, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic
• 1 lb chicken thighs
• 1 large bunch of kale, chopped
• 1 package frozen spinach (10 oz)
• 1.5 tablespoons Cajun seasoning, OR
  • .5 tablespoon paprika
  • .5 teaspoons black pepper
  • .5 teaspoons white pepper
  • .75 teaspoons garlic powder
  • .75 teaspoons onion powder
  • pinch teaspoon thyme
  • cayenne to taste

1. Melt butter in a thick-bottomed pot and add flour to form a roux.  Stir until darkened, about the color of peanut butter. Don't leave this unattended or you will be sorry.
2. Add the onions, peppers, and celery.  Cook until vegetables begin to soften.  Add garlic and spices and cook an additional few minutes. I usually give the onions a head start because I can not abide the slightest bit of crunch in an onion.
3. Add chicken and 2 cups water.  Add the kale a handful at a time, waiting until the last handful wilts down to add more.  Depending on how cooked you want your kale to be, cook the chicken for an hour before adding the kale.
4. Simmer until the chicken starts to fall apart, about 2 hours.  Stir spinach in before serving. Add salt to taste (premixed Cajun seasoning will contain salt).

Serves 4-5, appx  300 calories.

Adapted from Chow. Also seen on Go Go Go.

Molasses Cookies

I've been trying to cut down on sweet things lately.  I'm not necessarily what you would call a sweet tooth, but there are still plenty of places I could cut back on sugary empty calories.  The first thing to get the axe (well, almost) was soda.  I LOVE a cold, frosty coke.  If there is anything I could call a craving, that would be it.  When I haven't had one for a while, I feel like I would punch somebody in the face to get one.  I used to drink as much as one a day, but now I'm trying to limit myself to one or two a week.  It's been tough, I'm not gonna lie.  I used to also enjoy an occasional sweet treat after dinner--a cookie, a piece of fudge that is still left in the fridge from Christmas candy making time, a small scoop of ice cream....  No more.  At least, not as often.  Now those indulgences need to be much more occasional, which means I need to make them count even more when they do happen.  Let me tell you, molasses cookies were a worthy choice.  Besides, what sounds more old timey than molasses cookies?  Possibly something containing the word mutton, but I think we could all pass on that.

 

This was a recipe from my mom's archive that she has had for as long as I can remember rifling through her recipe box.  It came from her godmother, Ginny, and when I made them recently, my mom admitted to me that she had never personally made them herself.  So here was this little gem, sitting undiscovered and unappreciated for all these years.  I'm glad I revived it.  On my first try I did my best to replace the shortening in the recipe with butter because, well, it's butter.  I will say only this: it did not work and was sort of comical.  Now let us never speak of it again.  Then I decided that Ginny probably knew a thing or two about molasses cookies or the recipe would never have been requested in the first place and made them her way.  I tinkered a bit with the spices but otherwise followed the original recipe.  They turned out wonderful.  My dad pointed out that they actually taste a little like a pumpkin pie in the form of a cookie.  Given that there is no pumpkin, that might seem odd, but because there are a lot of similar spices in the two, it really is true.  This makes a fairly thin cookie; you don't get a super high rise because they spread out quite a lot.  But if you bake them right, you'll get a slightly crunchy edge and a nice, soft center that will stay chewy for days.  If you manage to have any left by then....

 

Ginny's Molasses Cookies

1 1/2 cups flour

2 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. ground cloves

1/2 tsp. ground ginger

1 tsp. ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp. salt

3/4 cups shortening

1 cup sugar

1 egg

4 Tbs. molasses

Preheat the oven to 350.  Whisk the flour, soda, spices and salt together in a bowl and set aside.

Cream the shortening and sugar together until fluffy.  Beat in the egg, and then the molasses until well combined.  Add in the dry ingredients either by stirring them in by hand, or mixing them in with your mixer on the lowest speed.

Make balls of dough using about 1 Tbs. of dough at a time.  I used a #50 portion scoop.  Roll the dough balls in sugar and place on a baking sheet.  I put no more than 8 on a baking sheet at a time because they spread out a lot.  Bake for 8 or 9 minutes, then let them rest on the sheet pan for another 5 minutes.  Remove from the sheet pan and allow them to cool for a minute or 2 longer before you dig in.  I will admit that I forgot to count, but I think this made a few dozen cookies.

 

Irish Cream Fudge

You may remember that Christmastime = candytime in the Bailey house.  It's a very calorie intensive time, because you know I gots to test it all.  Can't give something away to your loved ones if you haven't verified its tastiness, you know.  And since it's the only time of the year that I make candy, I feel the need to make AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE.  I really can't even help myself.  Last year I totally ran out of people to feed it to and was still cranking out fudges and brittles, just for the experience.  Some of it was in our fridge for months.  It all keeps really well, but neither of us needed to be randomly eating fudge for weeks on end.  Luckily this year Marc is back to a "real" Army unit and I have a whole battalion to feed, if I want. 

When some people cook (see: my blogging partner, Laura) they just throw things together as they go, relying on their intuition and creativity to pull a dish out of thin air.  I have a lot of admiration for those people.  Those who are good at it can make some of the yummiest things you've ever had.  But that's not how I operate.  I have developed a lot of cooking intuition, don't get me wrong, but I am a scientist in my heart and in my kitchen.  I measure almost everything.  I set the timer constantly, and I take the readings of my thermometer as gospel.  

So when it comes to something as precise (and potentially dangerous) as candymaking, I don't fly by the seat of my pants; I follow a set of rules:  

Rule #1 - Be safe.  This is the most important.  I like to think I'm not a safety lame-o, but you can really hurt yourself or someone else with boiling hot sugar, so I don't mess around with it.  Even though I am careful, I burned the crap out of my finger this year on 320 degree peanut brittle.  Not fun.  My blisters remain long after the brittle is gone.  

Rule #2 - This kind of goes along with rule #1, but pay attention to what you're doing.  Know thyself.  Know what your distractions are and make sure you find a way to mitigate them.  For example, if you're like me, you may not want to try to make buttercrunch while watching soccer.  Otherwise you boil your mixture right past that 300 degree mark while you're busy watching Ozil send a perfect cross into the box for Cristiano Ronaldo to score.  No, I've never done it.  I'm just sayin'.  

Rule #3 - Use really good ingredients.  Crappy chocolate makes crappy fudge.  What?  There's no such thing as crappy chocolate?  Ok, you may have a point.  But this much is true: really good chocolate makes really good fudge.  Lower quality chocolate does not melt as nicely and certainly doesn't taste as complex.  

Rule #4 - Prep everything first.  Otherwise you end up with a pot-ful of something burning hot and no buttered pan to spread it into.  FAIL.  

Rule #5 - Use a much bigger pot than you think you need.  Boiling sugar mixtures tend to bubble up furiously.  

Rule #6 - Use a thermometer.  Always.  Our cooking ancestors had a handle on that thing where you put a drop of the hot sugar mixture into a glass of water to see if it was at the soft ball or hard crack stage, or whatever.  There is no reason to do that now because there are these things called thermometers, and they are (usually) very accurate.

Given that we now have a set of rules, let's break one, shall we?  I make this fudge every year because it's so easy.  It also has a lovely boozy taste, and you know this girl is in favor of that.  I don't know what the magic is with this recipe and I cannot remember where it came from so I'm not sure who to thank, but you don't need a thermometer.  You just bring the sugar mixture to a low boil and stir the hell out of it for a while, then pour it over the chocolate chips to melt them, and spread it in a pan.  Done.  It's like I can forget everything I know about candymaking!!!  Except I'm still going to use the good chocolate.

Irish Cream Fudge

My recipe notes that you should store this fudge in the refrigerator, and I normally do, but it does fairly well at room temp, too.  I've shipped it to friends and family before and it traveled just fine.  I left out the nuts this year because one of my recipients doesn't care for nuts in desserts, and since he is deployed and has to be away from his family for Christmas, he gets what he likes.  It was still very good without them.

24 oz. milk chocolate chips

12 oz. semisweet chocolate chips

14 oz. marshmallow creme

2 tsp. vanilla

2/3 cup Irish cream liqueur, such as Bailey's

2 cups chopped nuts (optional)

4 1/2 cups granulated sugar

12 oz. can evaporated milk

1/2 pound butter (2 sticks)

Line a 10" x 15" x 1" pan with heavy duty foil and rub the foil with one of the sticks of butter.  In a large, heavy bowl, add all the chocolate chips, marshmallow creme, vanilla, Irish cream and nuts.

In a heavy saucepan, combine the sugar, milk and butter over medium heat and bring to a boil.  Turn the heat down until the mixture is at a low boil and cook, stirring constantly, for 10 minutes.  This seems like a long time when you are stirring, but don't skimp on this part.

Pour the hot milk mixture over the chocolate chip mixture and stir until everything is melted together.  Pour the mixture into the prepared pan and chill until set.  Turn out onto a large cutting board, peel the foil off the back and cut into small squares.  Or, be lazy like me and let people cut pieces off of a big chunk.

 

French Onion Soup

It rained all day in north central Kentucky on Monday.  All.  Day.  Dark, dreary, chilly and wet.  Which is fine, because we finished most of the outside chores we had planned for the weekend, and it made for awesome soup weather.  The storage shed was assembled, the grass was cut, the garage was mostly organized.... so we took advantage of a nasty "stay inside and put on comfy clothes" kind of day with french onion soup.  And now, so can you!

I've probably mentioned my love of America's Test Kitchen on this blog before.  If I haven't, here it is: I love that show.  While Marc was on his 2nd deployment to Iraq right after we got married, I bought myself most of the books they've ever published, which happily came with every season of the show on dvd for free.  I watched them ad nauseum.  I still do.  How someone can watch a chicken being roasted about 60 times within a 5 year period is beyond explanation, but here we are.  I know it makes me lame, and I don't give a fig.  I never get tired of the show.  And when a new season's worth of cookbooks and dvds shows up in my mailbox, I'm downright giddy about it.  I honestly believe it is my obsession with this show that has made me a decent home cook.  It's because they teach you the basics and the methods, not just specific recipes.  It's because they explain the science, and not just the ingredients.  When company comes over, I am confident enough in the ATK recipes to choose ones that I've never made before, because I know that as long as I follow the directions, they will come out great.  Pretty much every recipe is a winner....

....but there's an exception to every rule, right?

I can only think of a handful of ATK recipes that I was not impressed with.  And before I attract the negative attention of Christopher Kimball, let me just say, I'm sure it was operator error.  The failures are so rare that they stick out in my mind like cubes of Velveeta on a fancy cheese tray.  Chicken tikka masala-- I had SO much hope for that one, but it was bland, bland, bland.  How something could smell that fragrant and have an ingredient list that long and still have no flavor is beyond me.  Once I tested a recipe for them (yes, I am an ATK recipe tester, that's how big of a dork I am about the show) for crab cakes, and although they tasted fantastic, they totally crumbled apart into a million pieces.  Had I been serving those to guests I would have been really embarrassed.

Another let down was french onion soup.  The method involves cooking the onions in the oven.  It takes for-e-ver.  Every half hour or so you take the giant, burning hot, heavy Dutch oven out of the oven and deglaze the pan and then keep putting it back in until the onions are very dark.  And if you're like me, the fond in the pot is BURNT by the time you are done.  The burning seems to happen within seconds.  You take the pot out to deglaze and everything looks great and then moments later the fond is black.  I can't figure out how to avoid it.  Might as well call it Schrodinger's onions because at any given moment in time it's as if the fond is simultaneously burned and not, but you don't know what state it's going to be in until you take the lid off of the pot and force it to assume a position.  And even with all that long, slow cooking and how lovely and deep and brown and caramel-y those onions look, there is no flavor, except the flavor of carbon from the burnt onion fond.  I have tried their method twice because they made it look so easy on the show, and I really wanted to give it a fair shake.  But it's a LOT of work for no pay off.  That was the conclusion I came to both times.  So I'm going with a simple stove top method using boxed beef broth.  It's probably nothing like how a French cook would make it, so maybe I should call it American onion soup.  Regardless, it's less work and we love it.

As usual, I consulted my old cookbooks and found several recipes for cream of onion soup.  Most of the soups our ancestors made were apparently cream of whatever, and that didn't interest me here.  (However, I will be revisiting cream of tomato soup in the near future.  YUM.)  So I went with a version that is my own adaptation from a Ladies' Home Journal cookbook recipe.  I've been making this recipe in various ways for many years, and I've gotten it just how I like it.  Screw that burnt fond / oven method.

French (American) Onion Soup

It's very important that you use broiler safe bowls for this.  Do not put anything under a broiler that doesn't specifically say broiler safe.  You done been warned.

1/4 cup butter
1 Tbs. oil
3 lb. white or yellow onions, thinly sliced
2 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. salt
2 (32 oz.) boxes low sodium beef broth
1 1/2 cups water
2 bay leaves
1 sprig fresh thyme
18 whole peppercorns
1/2 cup brandy
more salt to taste, as much as a few teaspoons
1 baguette or loaf of french bread
8 oz. gruyere cheese, shredded
8 oz. parmesan cheese, shredded

Heat the butter and oil in a large Dutch oven over medium high heat.  Once the butter has stopped foaming, add the onions, sugar and 1 tsp. salt.  Stir to coat the onions in the butter and oil and cook until beginning to soften.  Turn the heat down to medium low and continue to cook the onions, stirring occasionally until very soft and dark brown.  This will take a while, depending on the output of your stove and even the moisture in the onions.  I've had it take anywhere from 30 minutes to about an hour.  Once a lot of the moisture is gone, the onions will probably begin to stick a little bit to the pot and leave behind tasty browned bits of fond.

After the onions are very soft and dark, pour about half a cup of the broth into the pot and scrape up the browned bits using a wooden spoon.  Once the fond is all scraped up, add the remaining broth, the water, bay leaves, thyme and peppercorns.  If you have cheesecloth handy, this would be a great time to make a little sack for your peppercorns, bay leaves and thyme sprig.  That way they are super easy to fish out when you're done.  Boost the heat to high and bring the soup to a boil.  Once boiling, turn the heat back down to medium low and simmer gently for half an hour to 45 minutes.  Add brandy and simmer for 5 minutes more.   Remove the bay leaves and thyme sprig and either fish out the peppercorns, or warn those partaking not to bite down on them.  I've left them in before and have never bitten down on one.  They are pretty easy to spot as you scoop up spoonfuls of soup.

Preheat your broiler.  Slice enough pieces of bread to cover each bowlful of soup and then toast the bread until golden.  Ladle the soup into each broiler safe bowl, top with toasted bread slices and 2 to 3 Tbs. of each kind of cheese.  Place the bowls on a sheet pan and slide the pan under the broiler.  Broil until the cheese is melted and spotty brown.  It only took about 2 minutes in my broiler, but you'll need to go by eye, not time.  Careful!  It will be HOT when you dig in.