A francophony of onion soup

By populous request, here's a recipe for French Onion soup. Strictly speaking it isn't vegan, as it should absolutely be served with bread and a good grating of Gruyère/Emmental, but strictly speaking it is vegan because you absolutely don't have to add the cheese, unless I'm around. This isn't my recipe -- I think I stole it from Nigel Slater in the Observer a few months ago -- but it works nicely: his hint, which is also mine, is to make sure the onions are well browned, but to brown them slowly. Slowly. In short, make sure you have a good hour free, and something else to do like having a stab at the Riemann hypothesis.

Serves some people.

Ingredients:

About ten smallish onions, or equivalent larger ones. (The more the better.)
1 large glass white wine
1 good quality vegetable stock cube, or about half a litre of fresh veg stock (topped up to a litre with water)
(sprig of parsley and a bay leaf: these are by no means essential; if you have made your own stock then you probably put them in there, and there is no need to bother)
olive oil

To serve: baguette, or other stout bread
emmental/gruyère

Method:

1. Peel the onions. Chop them in half. Cut them into fine slices longitudinally.

To cook the soup in, you will want some kind of large saucepan or cauldron. However, I've found it's best to start browning the onion in two pans, so they have more access to the bottom of the pan and therefore brown rather than just sweating. Use the cauldron for one half of the onions, and a large frying pan for the other.

2. Heat a good table spoon of olive oil in both pans, heat it up a little bit and add half the onions to each. Turn down the heat as low as possible so that the pan is still heated. Leave the onions, stirring them occasionally. Now you want to let them brown -- but slowly -- over the course of a good forty-five minutes. Don't brown them too quickly. Have the heat very low. I'm milking this point a little, but caramelising the onion is the key to making the soup taste like French Onion soup rather than onions in water.

3. As the onions in both pans cook down, you can transfer those in the frying pan into the cauldron. Let them cook down some more.

4. Once they are brown, you can make it into soup. Pour in the glass of wine. Add the stock (or add about a litre of cold water and a stock cube). If you are bothering with parsley and bay leaf, add them now.

5. (Read point 6 now too, as some simultaneous action is required). Bring to the boil, and simmer for about fifteen minutes. Fish out the parsley -- which will look like mutant algae by this point -- and the bay leaf. Taste repeatedly and season heavily (I do like to over-salt things by most people's taste, but this will be awfully bland if you under-season it).

6. About half an hour before you want to serve (this might be whilst you're still browning the onions, actually), heat an oven to 100 degrees. Cut the baguette into rounds, and place them in the oven. The idea is to dry them out so that they float on the soup, rather than toast them.

7. Remove the bread from the oven. Turn on the grill.

8. By this time, the soup should be done to the point described in point 5. Ladle the soup into bowls, and place two or three pieces of baguette on top of each. Pray like Noah that they float. Now grate the gruyère/emmental over the top of each bowl. Place the bowls under the grill until the cheese has gone a nice golden brown colour and has a texture like sun.

(n.b. any vegan worth their tofu should know perfectly well which bits they should omit. If they're lucky they will have soup with toast on top. By gods, if you must put on some fake cheesly/parmesano/soya-based-goo then go for it, just do it in a darkened room.)

9. Remove from the grill. Turn off the grill. Turn on Channel 4 where Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall will be dissecting a liver. Sit and eat and be glad you is a real vegan.