French Cabbage and Onion Soup

There are certain ingredients that food people adore that make normal people cringe. Take cabbage, for example. Last week, I told Craig I was going to cook a cabbage for dinner and it was as if I’d said, “Instead of going out for cocktails, let’s get our flu shots!”

The thing about cabbage is that you can easily transform it. Toss it with a peanut dressing, you’ve got an exciting salad; char it and roast it in the oven, you’ve got a dramatic side dish. You can stuff it, sauté it, stir-fry it; the possibilities are endless. My mission? To turn it into French Onion Soup.

Now I know that I can’t be the first person to ever have had the idea of turning cabbage into French Onion Soup — I dare not Google it — but I was excited at the idea of cooking a whole Napa cabbage and two sliced onions in lots of butter for as long as humanly possible to get them deeply, profoundly, golden brown.

Isn’t that wild how that mountain of cabbage and onions cooks down to barely nothing? C’est la vie. The game is to keep the heat low while it cooks so you don’t scorch anything; you want to slowly draw out the color, not stamp it on to the outside. A trick that the late chef Naomi Pomeroy taught me for my cookbook was to start the onions on high heat (we were making her legendary French Onion Soup) and as soon as you see any color, to lower the heat and then cook for an hour until it looks like the picture above, stirring as often as necessary so it doesn’t stick to the bottom.

Once the onions and cabbage were there, I added a tablespoon of flour, let that cook for a bit, then added four cups of chicken stock (I’d say it was homemade, but the picture gives me away). You let it all simmer for about ten minutes so it comes together and thickens. At that point, you can taste for salt and you might say, “Hmm… this is good but was it really worth all that work?” That’s because you’re missing one key ingredient that Chef Pomeroy also taught me about: Balsamic vinegar.

I can’t tell you how much Balsamic does for this soup. It’s like that scene in an 80s movie where the nerdy heroine takes off her glasses and suddenly beocomes a bombshell. Same here: the balsamic adds sweetness and zip. And for even more zip, Naomi has you add some Tabasco.

Instead of buying French Onion Soup tureens, you can take the easy way out: thickly slice some really good sourdough, broil until brown on both sides, top with shredded cheese (we had Appenzeller) and place back under the broiler until melted.

Then all you have to do is ladle the soup into bowls, top with your cheese toast, and sprinkle with some Aleppo pepper (my preferred garnish) and you’ve got a dish that gives a real boost to cabbage’s reputation.

I bet you could just call it “French Onion Soup” and no one would even know there was cabbage in there. But that would be lying and we don’t encourage lying about food at Amateur Gourmet Headquarters.