Blue Plate Special - French Onion Soup

Live with a Frenchman long enough and you'll end up making French Onion Soup for him...and quaking in your boots about whether or not it lives up to his mother's (or in this case, father's) recipe.

So I found a recipe I wanted to try last week. It was pretty easy, not a lot of steps or ingredients but you have to set aside an afternoon to make it because it takes about 4 hours of prep time.

Yeah, you read that right - 4 hours. What was I thinking?

 Start with 3 tablespoons of butter in an oven-proof pot and then add in 6 yellow onions cut in 1/4 inch slices (pole to pole) along with a teaspoon of salt.

 Cover and cook in a 400 degree oven for an hour.

 Take out of oven and give everything a good stir, scraping the sides of the pot. Then put back in oven with the lid slightly ajar for another hour and a half. Your house smells amazing at this point.

The onions are soft and golden brown.

Put the pot on the stove with a medium-high heat and cook (stirring frequently) until the liquid has evaporated.

 At this point things go pretty quickly. Start de-glazing the pan with 1/4 cup of water and cook until it evaporates. Do this 2-3 times until the onions become very dark and mushy.

At this point you have a big pile of onion goo.

Add 1/2 cup of sherry or white wine and de-glaze one last time, scraping the bottom and sides of your pot.

Add in 6 cups of beef broth, 2 cups of water, a little thyme and a bay leaf and bring to just under a boil. Then reduce your heat and simmer for 30 minutes. You're almost finished at this point, I promise!

Finish it off with toasted french bread and a whole lot of cheese (I used Swiss) and put under the broiler for a few minutes until cheese melts and voila

The perfect French Onion Soup!

And the French guy that lives here - he loved it.

Ingredients

6 yellow onions

3 tablespoons butter 

1 teaspoon salt

water to de-glaze - 1/4 cup at a time

1/2 cup sherry or white wine

6 cups beef broth (I used 8 and skipped the next ingredient)

2 cups water

sprinkle of thyme

1 bay leaf (don't forget to fish it out at the end!)

salt and pepper to taste

sliced French bread - toasted

Swiss/gruyere cheese

my favorite apron

I just love to bake so when the man of the place cleaned out the freezer the other day and mentioned that I had a "ton" of frozen bananas in there, I took the (very broad) hint and decided to spend today baking banana bread, which I promise to tell you about another day.

BUT, I can't even begin to talk about baking without first talking about aprons. Don't you just love aprons? I can't resist an apron made from vintage-style fabrics. If you ever lose me in a kitchen store, just look for the apron display. Aprons make me feel like Julia Child, June Cleaver, Donna Reed and Lucy Ricardo all rolled into one.

So a couple of years ago I was thrilled to find a great online apron designer, Cindy from Retro Revival. Actually, I guess I didn't find her online, I found her at the Great American Pie Festival because we were both living in Central Florida at the time. Anyway, I fell in love with her aprons and was determined to have her make something for me.

I knew just what I wanted. Don't laugh but I found the perfect vintage apron at the American Girl store. Unfortunately it wasn't quite my size because it was made for a doll. So I asked Cindy to make me an apron just like Kit Kittredge had.

 I really loved the mix of fabrics. It's hard to tell in this picture but those are cherries on the bodice.

Here's the finished product, isn't it great? I look forward to wearing it whenever I'm in the kitchen.  And so, the first thing I did today, before the first egg was cracked, was to put on my apron because that's what you do when you are about to begin a day of marathon baking.

 Of course, the second thing I did was take a selfie because...ha, there's really no good reason for that but I guess I was just feeling sassy in my apron and wanted to share. Lucky you!

Blue Plate Special - Pate Chaud

Thanks for joining me today as I explore more fun with puff pastry!

Seriously, you could wrap just about anything in puff pastry and I would be over the moon so it was no surprise that I fell hard for a great Vietnamese treat that my husband made for me a few years ago - pate chaud. It's basically a little savory meat pie that the man of the place remembered from his childhood. It's the perfect blend of Vietnamese cooking with French influence. 

And it's pretty darned easy to make too!

Just a few ingredients - chopped onion, shredded carrot, minced garlic and pork. We cheated a bit and used a breakfast sausage. The liquid is nuoc mam, Vietnamese fish sauce. There are easy recipes all over the Internet. The man of the place uses more garlic in his nuoc mam than you typically find at Vietnamese restaurants and let me tell you, it's amazing.

Mix all these together and fry them up till the sausage is no longer pink. 

Now comes the fun part

roll out the yummy puff pastry (have I mentioned how much I LOVE puff pastry?) and cut along the fold lines. The man wants me to mention that it's best to dust your cutting service with flour before you open up the pastry to keep it from sticking.

Pile up a clump of the meat mixture (I'm thinking that clump is not the correct term but I'm too tired right now to come up with a more appropriate one) on the bottom half of the pastry. Because it was pre-cooked, it was a bit crumbly this time. We might try not cooking the mixture next time and just trust that it'll get fully cooked during the baking process. If my next blog post is from the hospital, you'll know that didn't work.

Fold the pastry strip over the meat mixture and use a fork to seal the edges. You can beat up an egg and brush it along the edges before folding just to glue things together before you start forking. We actually forgot that step so the little bowl of egg wash in the background is mainly there for show at this point.

Really important step - take a knife and cut a couple of vents in the top so that you don't end up with exploded pie guts all over your oven.

I probably should have mentioned this at the beginning - pre-heat your oven to 400. Put the pretty pies on a baking sheet and pop them in the oven for 20 minutes. Pull them out and brush that egg wash all over the top (see, it wasn't purely there for show in the earlier picture) and then put it all back in the oven for another 5-ish minutes until it's all golden brown and crunchy.

Seriously, these are amazing. They are the perfect winter evening comfort food.

Usually these pies are round and smaller than the ones we've made. All you do is use the biscuit cutter to make 2 round circles for the top and bottom crusts. We decided to make a quick and easy version that I prefer because there is more room for filling.

Voila, here's today's Blue Plate Special!

WTF Wednesday - petit pain au chocolate

It's time to bring back one of my favorite blog features - WTF Wednesday! 

 A little over a year ago I discovered the secret to happiness - you can totally make chocolate croissants (or as my French husband would say - petit pain au chocolate - he refuses to call them by the easy name) at home! This is either good news or bad news depending on your perspective, I guess. I am choosing to throw all thoughts of diet aside and declare it the Best. News. Ever.

I took pictures of the entire process to share with you. They are really easy to make, I figure even I could do it...but why would I want to when I have my own personal French chef? ;-)

just a few ingredients away from warm, melty, chocolate croissants!



Lightly flour your surface, unfold the puff pastry sheet and then cut in 3 pieces by following the fold lines

measure about 7 inches and cut the rest off to use for something else

fold over a little at the top



brush on an egg wash at the bottom. this will be your "glue" later

line up your chocolate chips, keep them in the middle when it's all folded over

fold over and press down just a little on the bottom where the egg wash was brushed. don't press too much or it won't puff up in the oven

preheat the oven to 400

set the timer for 20 minutes

put those babies in the oven

about five minutes before time is up, pull them out and quickly (and lightly) brush the entire croissant with egg wash, then put them back in the over for the final 5 minutes



DING! They're done!

Make sure you let them cool down a bit before devouring or else you'll burn your mouth...then again, maybe it's worth a little pain.

Now Wasn't That Fun?

and yummy too!