use real butter

ore experimentation with food coming up tomorrow. I’m hanging my skis for the remainder of the week unless someone gets a huge dump of snow. Not feeling like I want to deal with the holiday crush and I have stuff to do.

chicken teriyaki and edamame

Last night we went to First Bite Boulder with Tom and Kellie at Laudisio. The new restaurant is far bigger and more chic than the old establishment. It moved to the new upscale, bourgeois 29th Street Mall. I like the old restaurant better. It had more of a family feel to it, and now they have bimbo hostesses, and clueless young waiters who don’t know that you need a spoon, not a fork, to eat crème brûlée.

The food itself was okay, and I think that had more to do with the set menu of First Bite Boulder and the fact that the place was hopping. I suppose we’ll go back some night and order from the regular menu just to see if the place has become a different restaurant, but last night was not overly impressive.

buffalo carpaccio appetizer

The company was first rate though. Tom and Kellie are great to talk with about all of the topics you aren’t supposed to discuss in polite company: religion, politics, family, and of course, poo talk. Although dinner ended, our conversation did not and we walked across the street to a home decor store to find a warm place to chat and just wander. All of the stores are decked out for the holidays and with the cool temperatures in Colorado, it felt festive and sparkly.

kellie and the white deer

That wooden spoon in the mouth trick really does take the edge off of slicing onions. It’s the ethylsufine that makes your eyes water. This chemical is released when you break the membrane of the onion cells that keeps a certain enzyme and sulfur compounds separate. The two mix and hence the sobbing begins. Onions go in just about everything. Imagine life without onions. We would have sad stews, sad soups, sad non-onion rings, no mirepoix, sautés would be dull, lonely beef, lonely chicken, guacamole without that certain special something… And french onion soup would be reduced to french soup. Not to mention what would happen to all of those french onion dips: sad chips.

But that’s someone else’s life, not mine. Inspired by what Nathan made for Nicole (a geophysicist who cooks - you have to love that!) I revisted an old favorite tonight. I use regular onions, not sweet onions, because sweet onions taste bizarre to me in this soup and the sugars that already exist in the regular onions get somewhat caramelized anyway.

slice onions (cry); heat butter in pan, sauté onions

add broth to slightly caramelized onions; brush bread slices with butter/olive oil

top bread with parmesan and bake; ladel soup into bowls and top with croutons

sprinkle gruyère on top and broil until bubbly