Mama C gave me this book.
And one of my favorite gifts from friends,
colleagues that I work with or family members
are vintage books like this.
They had the most unusual ingredient I've ever read
in an onion soup recipe in my life,
ground, toasted, almonds.
We have to start out with six onions.
So if you buy onions in a sack
and you have this, you need six.
If you have this, four or five'll do ya for four portions.
It is so important
that you cook this low and slow, just below medium.
So I added a little garlic,
you can see some sliced garlic floating around in there
and I'm cooking this in olive oil and butter in combination.
So we have blanched almonds,
and when I smelled that fragrance
of toasted almond in the kitchen, I saved it,
whoa, I did it.
I finally toasted a nut without burning it to death.
If you just leave it and you don't pulse it
you will make almond butter, which is not what you want.
You want the consistency of a very fine breadcrumb
but there's no bread in it.
So for the broth for the soup,
I like to mix, which is what I did today,
a little bit of bone broth homemade
or store bought with beef consomme.
It does have a fair amount of sodium in it,
just telling you, so you can use water, chicken broth,
vegetable broth, beef broth, whatever you have
in the pantry and mix in a little bit of Demi-glace,
see how dark and beautiful it is.
It'll give you that bang for your buck
that you're looking for in a, a onion soup presentation.
For six onions, two quarts total of liquid.
And I added a little,
a little something something today for my mom.
So I put in a bit of ground thyme, a little sprinkle
across the pot, about a teaspoon as well,
but that's not necessary.
So this has been going a full hour,
but notice this is still pretty nude.
That's what we're gunning for here.
That's what we're going for team.
Now, I have the broiler,
on kind of medium, but we're gonna make toast out
of just Italian bread.
Like keep it reasonable, three quarters of an inch,
no more than an inch for sure.
Okay guys, so here is our beautiful,
really super soft onions, six of them.
It's cooked in olive oil and butter
with white pepper and a little bit of fine ground
black pepper.
And for my mom, I did add, I snuck in about a teaspoon
of ground thyme.
And now we're adding in that, that stock concoction
that I told you about.
Now, we're going to add the cup
of toasted B blanched almonds.
Well toasted blanched almonds.
Now we're going to take a stick blender, inexpensive,
you can buy them online.
See now the onion and the nuts can truly combine.
We're looking pretty good there, all right.
So what we're gonna do is take butter and olive oil
and combination in a small pan, melt it together
and liberally paint our giant crouton, right?
So what I'm gonna do is now take parmigiano reggiano
all over the toast.
Smoked cinnamon, crazy delicious,
and a little bit of parsley.
Now we have to bring this back up
to a bit of a bubble and let it reduce a bit,
and then we have one more surprise.
Okay guys, are you ready?
Here are the beautiful Florentine toasts.
The tiniest drizzle of either Brandy
or Sherry around the edge of the pot.
And this is what I mean by lace, the tiniest drizzle.
Look how velvety that is just, just nuts.
There's no cream in that whatsoever.
Beautiful, then we float the toast
and as you eat it, the soup, the toast will start to sink.
And when you get to the end, it will be,
well, magic.