For all their elegance and style, at heart the French are still peasants.

Now Monsieur and Madame, before you start tossing a baguette et fromage in my direction, try to understand that this is an observation, not an insult. There is much to be said for humble origins.

Indeed the French peasantry was responsible for delivering to us some of the best food ever invented. Essentially simple, with a profound sense of respect for the ingredients upon which it is based, it was through their food culture that the French rural classes staged their first revolution.

As with most Mediterranean cuisines, the true character of French food lies in agriculture. Take great varietals of plants, grow them well, and then distil from these the essence of their unique flavour. It's a less-is-more approach that has stood the French farmers in good stead for generations.

The truest example of this rule is the humble onion. We take onions for granted so much of the time, considering them to be a building block of recipes, never valuable in their own right. Yet the chefs of Lyon, in France's east, took great pride in their weep-inducing vegetable, and championed it above all others. After centuries of pot stirring, they gave us the French onion soup.

Conceptually, this is a remarkably simple recipe. Take some onions, and cook them gently (in a morass of butter I should mention - so French) until they are sticky-sweet and lightly caramel. This slow sauté converts the onion's sugars from objectionably tart to tantalisingly delicious. This is the basis of the soup.

Funnily enough, from there it's up to the chef as to what should be done. Classically, most Lyonnais chefs will add brandy and beef stock and reduce this mixture until dark and brooding, before finishing with Gruyere toasts. That said however, I've had extraordinary French onion soups made with a splash of crème fraîche, or loads of herbs, or even a decent dash of anchovies. That was unexpected, but equally tasty.

The only non-negotiable element of this soupy concoction is that the soup should deliver a powerful punch of rich onion taste. Don't be afraid to let this basic vegetable be the boss. As a great French chef once explained to me: 'Edward, when you do less, the ingredients can do more'.

See Fast Ed's French Onion Soup recipe.

See all of Fast Ed's recipes.

This article was kindly provided by Fast Ed. It first appeared in The Manly Daily.