I looked up a bunch of recipes for onion soup on the net, then sort of adapted to come up with this. This isn't an "official recipe," but it came out great and to me tasted exactly like real French onion soup. It was very thick and flavorful. I read that a trick is to cook the onions very slowly so they carmelize. Mine burned a little but I caught it in time, scraped up the brown bits, and it was still very tasty.

- Slice one large white onion very thinly (I did whole rings but other recipes suggest half-moon shapes). Then saute on very low heat with butter and oil. Stir occasionally so the onions brown evenly as they cook slowly. Then I added one sliced shallot, a little more butter, and cooked about 10 minutes longer.

- Then I added a little water (not too much, I wanted it to be thick), a teaspoon of sherry vinegar, a teaspoon of tamari, a couple grinds of combo pepper (pepper, allspice, and coriander), and a couple pinches of thyme. Cover and cook on low heat about 10 minutes longer.

Then I ladled some into a small pyrex dish, topped with crumbles of gorgonzola cheese, and baked in the oven for 5 minutes. Next time I'll try swiss or gruyere (more traditional). But the blue cheese and onions was a winning combination!

I also used a smaller saucepan to make this first batch; of course you could add more onions and double everything for a larger batch. But just this small batch with one onion served 2 with some left over.