"Onion Soup" news and stories

• A recipe for soupe à l'oignon gratinée, or French onion soup, done restaurant Comme Ça-style.
• David Mas Masumoto writes about his 80-acre organic peach, nectarine and raisin farm, and shares his lyrical thoughts on peach farming.
• Talk about local -- restaurants are starting their own gardens to help supply their diverse menus.
• The wine of the week, a 2007 Willi Schaefer Riseling Mosel Qualitätswein, is a prime summer bottle.
• Though their city may be warm year round, Los Angelenos also have farmers market fever. The Times checks out notable pre-prepared foods at the markets, provides tips for to creating a meal from a bounty of titillating ingredients, shares a list of current ripe-for-the-pickin' fruits and details the move to bring the markets to hospitals.

• It's Thanksgiving, and the magazine has a ton of great ideas.
• America's great wines to serve this holiday.
• Some easy recipes for foods to give as gifts this season.
• Jacques Pepin's favorite holiday desserts.
• A visit to the cooking school at Mexico's Rancho La Puerta spa.
• Here's the next great food destination in Las Vegas.
• The secrets of a cocktail master.
• This month's recipes include: Chicken Liver Pate' with Pistachios, Ginger Beef and Pork Toasts, Caramelized Onion and Toasted Bread Soup, Creamy Potatoes with Bacon, Applesauce Chocolate Chip Bundt Cake, Best Ever Nut Brittle, and Santa's Little Helper.

While once it seemed as though the only onion options were the generic sounding yellow, white and red, each variety of onion in the market is now labeled clearly - and there are a lot of them, in addition to those three standards. But what is the difference between them? The primary difference is sweetness, with some onions, known as sweet onions, lacking the sulfuric bite that most associate with an onion.

Sweet onions usually are available in summer and have a higher water content than so-called "storage onions", which contributes to their mild flavor. It also means that they have a somewhat shorter shelf life and are more delicate, prone to bruising, than their less-sweet counterparts. They can be used interchangeably with regular onions in cooking, since they will handle almost identically, but they will impart slightly different flavors to the finished dish. Many people prefer sweet onions in dishes that call for raw onions, such as salads, or for use on burgers and hot dogs.

I can't remember ever having a French onion soup that I loved. Sure, it was a dish I'd eat without complaint. But never have I longed for a cheese-crusted bowl of sweet oniony butteriness. Until now.

I was idly flipping through Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home, my favorite coffee table cookbook, when I came across this recipe. I had a huge bag of onions and I was intrigued: evidently, Jacques preferred white wine for "extra flavor" in his onion soup, while Julia Child preferred red. As I identify more with Julia than Jacques - and I had a bottle of red wine at the ready - I figured, why not? Off went my hubby to the market to get Gruyere, and some more wine, just for good measure.

Little did I know I was only an hour away from addiction.