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soupe aux oignons
Today I made onion soup. Is there any cheaper, more comforting, more delicious food? Even leek and potato has nothing on the delicious frugality of onion soup.
I can't hear the phrase 'onion soup' without thinking of my granny, because she can't hear the phrase 'onion soup' without thinking of Madame. It's always a little unsettling, I imagine, for people who don't know her, when she begins to reminisce about 'my Madame'. One might think that she is looking back on her golden days as a call-girl. But no...as far as I'm aware. Madame is a character in my mind almost as much as in my granny's, now, because I'm sure that she's told me the stories so many times that they've been wholesale copied from her brain to mine.
When my granny was a young girl, she worked as a milliner's assistant. These were the days when no women would think to leave the house without a hat on. You simply weren't dressed if you didn't have your hat! And Madame, the most parisienne of parisiennes, was the lady in charge. Granny goes into raptures talking about her.
She wore not one, but two corsets. She wore nothing but black, ever, with the reddest of red lips painted onto her face. Her hands were always immaculately manicured, and round her neck was draped a fox-fur, with a head on each end, their beady eyes watching over all the girls as they worked. With one deft movement of her hands and a few carefully placed pins, she could shape a swatch of fabric in the most elegant hats imaginable. For me she has become a kind of 1940s Anna Wintour/Carine Roitfeld hybrid...
She worked the girls hard, but she cared about them. "Violetta! To the stock room! Violetta! Do this! Do that!" she would cry. Or rather, my granny cries out, grinning, as she remembers. And when the stock room had been tidied, and this and that had been done, it would be time for lunch. Out would come a flask of beautiful home-made onion soup, and everyone would get a little taste. Apparently there was nothing like it in the world.
I can't hear the phrase 'onion soup' without thinking of my granny, because she can't hear the phrase 'onion soup' without thinking of Madame. It's always a little unsettling, I imagine, for people who don't know her, when she begins to reminisce about 'my Madame'. One might think that she is looking back on her golden days as a call-girl. But no...as far as I'm aware. Madame is a character in my mind almost as much as in my granny's, now, because I'm sure that she's told me the stories so many times that they've been wholesale copied from her brain to mine.
When my granny was a young girl, she worked as a milliner's assistant. These were the days when no women would think to leave the house without a hat on. You simply weren't dressed if you didn't have your hat! And Madame, the most parisienne of parisiennes, was the lady in charge. Granny goes into raptures talking about her.
She wore not one, but two corsets. She wore nothing but black, ever, with the reddest of red lips painted onto her face. Her hands were always immaculately manicured, and round her neck was draped a fox-fur, with a head on each end, their beady eyes watching over all the girls as they worked. With one deft movement of her hands and a few carefully placed pins, she could shape a swatch of fabric in the most elegant hats imaginable. For me she has become a kind of 1940s Anna Wintour/Carine Roitfeld hybrid...
She worked the girls hard, but she cared about them. "Violetta! To the stock room! Violetta! Do this! Do that!" she would cry. Or rather, my granny cries out, grinning, as she remembers. And when the stock room had been tidied, and this and that had been done, it would be time for lunch. Out would come a flask of beautiful home-made onion soup, and everyone would get a little taste. Apparently there was nothing like it in the world.