A French onion Monte Cristo.
When I make French onion soup, I start exactly the same way.
Four softball size onions,
or six to eight small onions.
We're going to take one bay leaf,
the entire bag of Goldie onions
and we're going to add it to a pan
over very low heat.
This is literally between low and medium heat
in a cast iron heavy bottom pan
so the heat stays nice and even.
I melted olive oil and butter and you see the butter
has not browned.
We don't want brown.
We want the sugars in the onions
to naturally develop very slowly.
How do we draw liquid out of anything?
We add salt.
So once we get the onions to the pan
immediately we salt them and I prefer white pepper.
And we're gonna let this cook low and slow
until these are literally caramel in color.
I'm gonna use classic white slicing bread.
The custard is made up of three eggs.
I'm gonna poke the yolk, and about a half a cup of cream,
a little nutmeg, and a pinch of salt.
As the onions cook, oh, I forgot to add my ground thyme.
You can add a little poultry seasoning
that everybody has leftover from Thanksgiving
or I use ground thyme, a little bit of thyme.
And then the fun part, once the onions are perfect
and they're nice and caramel and sugary sweet,
we're gonna add a splash of Brandy or Sherry.
Let that absorb.
And then a fat splash and had a half a cup
of white wine and let that cook out.
This is the acidity and levels of flavor in the dish.
So then we're going to assemble the sandwiches
with the Gruyere.
And I also had a little bit of beef or vegetable stock
as they said to keep the onions nice
and moist as they cook down.
For the salad, we're just gonna do mixed spring greens.
We're gonna take a little graded shallot,
a couple of tablespoons.
(grater bangs)
Comme ca?
And one clove of garlic.
Then we're going to add the juice of one half lemon
cut side up so that the seeds stay
with the lemon and don't fall into the bowl.
A good squirt of Dijon.
A nice drizzle of honey, couple tables.
Splash of white wine vinegar or white balsamic vinegar,
or champagne vinegar.
Add a little salt and pepper.
And we stream in olive oil to emulsify
So we...
and we cool them.
Then we take out the bay leaf.
Then take Gruyere if that's the cheese you're using, right.
Or we can use sliced Swiss from the deli if you prefer.
And all I've done is take the good quality white bread,
literally press it down into the bread.
I mound up a little cheese and I press it right down
in there.
Then add some of the cooled onions.
Instead of ham, we're basically making a giant
stuffed French onion crouton, right?
Like everybody loves in French onion soup, the top,
the bread and the cheese.
And then we press.
See how we're kind of setting it.
And then we turn it in our batter,
which is the custard with the cream and eggs and nutmeg.
We have the softened butter
and we use a little pastry brush
so we're not just throwing globs of butter onto the skillet.
(butter sizzles)
We butter the griddle or the skillet
and we let it cook low and slow.
We have a huge amount of herbs.
I am not going to cut them.
I'm using them like another ingredient in the salad.
Parsley tops, picked tarragon,
sprigs of dill, throw them right into the bowl.
Look at this beautiful baby lettuce.
It looks like a Rose.
And I have baby Swiss chard, rainbow chard actually.
I have frisee and we're going to pour our,
look still perfectly emulsified
Dijon dressing with our graded shallot
and a little bit of garlic.
We're going...
our beautiful greens and herbs....
I have some cornichon, little pickles
to put alongside our sandwich.
Here's our...
the inside of that.
Can you show them that.
That's our French onion Monte Cristo.
(soft jingle)