Steemit Iron Chef 2017 #15 : Onion Soup + Mashed Potatoes + Pickled Onion Salad

This was fabulous.

Today is my daughter, Kivi's, 16th birthday, and she requested her two favorite dishes for her birthday -- matar paneer and mashed potatoes. These don't seem to go on the same plate, so I needed an onion-rich meal that would go with taters. And here it is! (We'll make Indian tonight!)

Here's what I started with (plus potatoes and some cream):

Two of the red onions, the tomatoes and cukes, and some vinegar went to the salad and everything else was for the soup.

First thing is to slice the onions thin on a mandolin. Most of them went into a pot with some butter to sweat and start browning.

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Meanwhile, I blanched two of the purple onions by pouring boiling water over them and then I popped them into jars with a clove of garlic and some apple-cider vinegar and chilled them in the fridge.

After a light saute to get a bunch of onion water out, I added salt and pepper and closed up the pressure cooker and let them go for 20 minutes. They were nice and maillarded, but very wet, so I simmered them down for about fifteen minutes.

And then I cooked in about half a cup of sherry and let the alcohol be driven off before adding the stock. I made the stock with half miso (home-made from lentils over two years in a crock) and half Better Than Boullion No Beef (vegetarian) base -- I like the richer flavor of this combination than either one alone.

(Note, I save kitchen-trimmings in a bag in the freezer to make my own stock and I have enough ready to go, but didn't have the time to make my own.)

So I added two quarts of broth with some bay, thyme, and garlic:

I brought that up to a boil and left it a low boil for ten or twelve minutes. At that point, I turned off the heat under the pot and turned on the broiler. I'd cut some slices off the loaf of bread and toasted them while the soup was cooking. Now I ladled soup into some bowls, topped them with two slices of bread (the loaf's shape was a long way from the bowl's so I sort of overlapped corners of half-slices -- I should maybe have just done smaller croutons) and shredded Gruyere and broiled them for a few minutes.

Once the soup came out of the broiler, I topped the bowls with chives and a single pickled onion piece, and plated them with three quenelles of potato (still working on forming these well) which got a little stripe of onion-mushroom gravy and a sprinkle of chives, and some of the salad made from cucumbers, tomatoes and those pickled onions.

And here are some close-ups!

This meal used butter, cream, and Gruyere -- in the case of the butter and cream, it's super-easy to replace with plant-sourced equivalents. The soup is good without a cheese topping, but I sure do love it like this and I'm not sure what a good vegan alternative is.