Gourmet Vegetarian Slow Cooker - Lynn Alley [24]
Since that time, I have been fascinated by the plethora of French casseroles and dishes that lend themselves so well to the long, slow cook. Many were born of centuries of using similar earthenware vessels baked in a communal oven. (To save fuel and time, many villages had what they called a four banale, or common oven, an oven that everyone in the village could use, so that fuel was not wasted in myriad individual homes.)
Many such dishes contained meat, but many, of necessity, as with all cultures around the world, were made of vegetables in season, at times perhaps seasoned with a hint of meat, but more often with aromatic herbs and vegetables that could be gathered in the surrounding hillsides.
I can envision the French Alpine Cheese, Tomato, and Onion Soup, for instance, bubbling away on a stove top for hours, filling the air with the smells of a summer evening in the Alps. Or the Smoky Potage Saint-Germain, with its simple, hearty base of split peas, sending its earthy, smoky fragrance wafting into the air on a cold winter afternoon. And while I’m not likely to concoct a classic boeuf bourguignon these days, I have not given up the wine that so enriches it. On the contrary, I’ve tossed it into a pot of beans.
WINES WITH FRENCH FOOD
For many of us, French wines served as the door through which we passed into the world of wine. And for many of us, French wines were the yardstick against which we measured wine quality. Winemaking in France has a long and venerable history, going back to the earliest days of the Roman occupation, and probably going back to primitive efforts to ferment wild grapes of the region long before that.
Who doesn’t know the names of France’s major wine-producing regions and the unique wines that have been made there for centuries—the elegant Pinot Noirs of Burgundy, the crisp whites of the Loire Valley, the rich, inky reds of the southern Rhône, the aromatic whites of Alsace, the imperial reds and whites of the Bordeaux region, and the most spectacular sparkling wines in the world from the Champagne region? Then there are the more rustic but equally interesting wines from more obscure regions: Languedoc-Roussillon, Côtes de Provence, the Jura Mountains, Côtes de Ventoux, and so on.
This is a country in which, like Italy, wines and food have grown up together. The wines are made to accompany food and the foods are made to be consumed with wine. Get a wine map and explore. First from your armchair, then eventually, by exploring France’s wine regions and their foods on the ground, because all wines should ultimately be sampled in their natural environs.
FRENCH ALPINE CHEESE, TOMATO, AND ONION SOUP
Serves 4
One of the great joys of my childhood was having my mother read to me from Heidi. Heidi drank goat’s milk from a bowl for breakfast and had soup for dinner. In the Swiss Alps, Heidi enjoyed a feast that has sustained and nurtured people the world over for many centuries: soups, sometimes featuring the simplest of ingredients (as simple as some oats or flour, a nip of onion, and some broth or milk). Soups like this one have been made and drunk in France’s mountainous regions for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. All you need are some really flavorful ingredients, a creative mind, and a loving heart. Note: Don’t buy hard, flavorless tomatoes in the dead of winter and expect this simple soup to taste good! Use the best, freshest tomatoes you can find, preferably from your own garden, picked at the peak of ripeness on a late summer’s day. This is not a winter soup.
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 yellow onions, thinly sliced
Salt to taste (I use both smoked and sea salt)
¼ cup all-purpose