Half Blood Blues and French Onion Soup

Wow.  That is the first word that came to mind when I finished the last page of Esi Edugyan's wonderful novel Half-Blood Blues.  While I really like most of the books I read (the last one notwithstanding) it has been a while since I have read since a unique, moving and enjoyable book.  The novel toggles between the present day (or close to it) and 1930's Europe.  The narrator of the novel is Sidney Griffiths, who in the 30's was a bassist who traveled from Baltimore to Berlin with his best friend, a drummer, Chip Jones, to play jazz with the Hot Time Swingers, a motley of crew of German and American musicians.  Berlin before the Nazi's had a thriving jazz scene which attracted African-American musicians from the States.  The novel is both an upbeat memoir of the swinging lifestyle of these musicians and guilt ridden tale of jealousy and war.  At the heart of the story is Hieronymus Falk, a German musician of mixed race who is younger than the other band members (he is 20) and a blazing, world class talent on the trumpet.  The novel starts with Hiero being arrested by Nazi soldiers in a Paris cafe as Sidney stands by and does nothing to stop it.  The novel then moves both forward in time to the present, where Sidney is asked to travel to Berlin for a Hieronymus Falk jazz festival, and backwards, telling the story of the Hot Time Swingers and how Hiero ended up arrested.  The language and tempo of the novel are jazz-like - with generous use of the jazz hipster slang of the time.  It is a novel more about friendship than it is about jazz, though jazz is as an important character.  A struggled with a dish for the book since these cats don't spend a lot of time eating, both because of their lifestyle and the food shortages in war time Europe.  They spend most of their time drinking really cheap and brutal liquor they call "the Czech."  While they are in Paris there is a reference to "onion broth" so I seized on that and decided on a recipe for classic Onion Soup I found in a neat "Paris Cafe" cookbook.  The ingredients are so simple, perhaps they couldn't have gotten their hands on the bread and cheese during the occupation, but this soup is all about the onions.
More on the book and soup after the jump.

Half Blood Blues tells the story of a world that I  did not know existed before I picked up the book.  When I think of Germany in the years leading up to WWII, I don't think about jazz and I don't think that there were many people of African descent in Berlin.   The Berlin that Edugyan describes is a place that was once filled with music and shenanigans and fun and is suddenly turned into a very dangerous place.  Berlin is especially dangerous for the Hot Time Swingers, who play so called "degenerate" music and have band members that are American, black and Jewish. It is the appearance of a mysterious woman, Delilah, that changes everything for the band.  Delilah is a Jazz groupie and serves as a sort of platonic partner to the great Louis Armstrong, who at the time was living in Paris.  Delilah comes to Berlin to see the Hot Time Swingers because she has heard about the band's star -Hiero Falk.  Hiero is just 19 years old, a so called Rhineland bastard (his mother was a white German and his father was an African colonial soldier stationed in German), and most importantly an enormous talent.   Delilah asks the band to come to Paris to play with Armstrong, and the opportunity to escape to Paris is especially attractive to the Americans - Chip and Sid, and to Hiero, who in grave danger in Nazi Germany.  The rest of the band members are unable to escape to Paris for various reasons so the second half of the book really focuses in on Sid, Chip and Hiero.   While perhaps some may think Hiero is the star of this book, to me this book is all about Sid.  It is through Sid's eyes we view the band and through Sid's voice that we really get a feel for the music and the time and the relationships between these people.  Sid is the flawed everyman  - he is a mediocre talent that let jealousy cloud his moral compass, leading him to make a deeply regrettable decision.  Despite Sid's pettiness and jealousy I found him emotionally relatable - we all feel inadequate and jealous and make bad decisions.  Because of the time that he lived in, Sid's bad decision had tragic consequences.  I enjoyed both the portions of the book that took place in the 30's and the portions that took place in the 90's.  The scenes that take place closer to the present are dominated by the relationship of Sid and Chip 40 years later.  After the war Chip became a very successful and famous jazz drummer and Sid gave up music and lived a quiet life.  These two stayed friends despite their different lives, and they have a very "odd couple" type of relationship which adds a comic touch to the book.  But underlying the bantering of these two is underlying resentment and mistrust as to what happened to Hiero and Chip's role in it.  Chip drags Sid to Europe where Sid is forced to confront his relationship with Hiero and what happened during the war.  I found this book satisfying on many levels - it is written beautifully, is set in an interesting and vivid place and time, has emotionally charged relationships and a driving plot.  A suggest you go out and read it soon!

Onion Soup Gratinee, adapted from The Paris Cafe Cookbook (Daniel Young)

I have never been a fan of onion soup in restaurants.  It always seemed overflowing with greasy cheese with dark murkiness underneath.  I must say though, that this onion soup totally won me over.  It never would have crossed my mind to make onion soup at home, even though the ingredients are so basic, but I was inspired to make this because it seems like the kind of simple food that probably dominated the cafes that the characters of Half-Blood Blues haunted in occupied Paris.  And during war time Paris, at the very least they had onions and water, though of course the bread and cheese would have been harder to come by.  This soup has a really rich onion flavor and can be made heavier or lighter with the use of either more or less beef stock.  I just used the canned kind and it did not detract one bit from this soup.   This soup had really rich flavor but only took about an hour to make, with no more prep really than slicing up some onions.  I will definitely be adding this recipe to my favorites list.

Ingredients (for 4 servings)
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 pounds onions, thinly sliced
2 tablespoons flour
2 cups water
2 cups beef stock (or alternatively use all water or all beef stock)
1 cup white wine
1 bay leaf, 2 sprigs thyme, 2 sprigs parsley (tied together in cheesecloth, bouquet garni)
salt and pepper
1 baguette, sliced into thin rounds
1 to 2 cups of shredded Gruyere

Directions:

1. Melt the butter in a large saucepan or dutch oven over medium heat.  Add the onions and cook until dark golden colored, stirring occasionally.  I gave these onions about 25 minutes of cooking time to really develop a deep flavor.
2. Add the flour and stir and continue to cook on medium heat for 3 minutes.
3. Add the water, stock, wine and bouquet garni and simmer for 30-45 minutes.
4. Remove the bouquet garni.
5. Preheat the oven to 325.
6. Toast the baguette slices in toaster.
7. Ladle the soup into 4 oven safe bowls.  Add toast slices and dunk into the soup.
8. Sprinkle the cheese over the toast.
9. Bake in the oven for about 10 minutes.
10. Then turn the oven to broil and broil the soup until bubbling - about 1- 2 minutes max.