Our twenty pounds of onions, which initially did not even fit into two huge soup pots, have now cooked down into a beautiful mass of mahogany that filled about a third of one pot. We put four or five cups of it into one pot (saving the rest for later), added a little additional butter, water, salt, and the spice sachet. The soup is now bubbling away on the stove, and it will probably take another hour or so for the flavors to fully develop.
The caramelization took about nine hours total. It's possible to make this go faster, by using higher heat or adding sugar. But if you do it faster, you lose some of the magic that happens when hot white onions are transformed into a deep brown mass of gooey sweetness. That's the sort of kitchen alchemy worth waiting for.
While the onions were going this evening, we managed to finish up a few more tasks. Michael peeled all the roasted beets, making the kitchen look like a murder scene:
Meanwhile, I detached the straight necks from three butternut squash, diced them, and roasted them:
Fun foodie moment: At DiBruno Brothers today, I was looking in the freezer case for puff pastry, which they didn't have, but I did spot some awesome ice cream from Vosges. They call these flavors "hautes glaces," and who am I to argue? I got the wattle seed flavor, in memory of Australia, because basically no one outside of Australia has ever heard of wattle seeds and it was so awesome to be able to have them again --- especially as dessert.
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