French Onion Soup

It rained all day in north central Kentucky on Monday.  All.  Day.  Dark, dreary, chilly and wet.  Which is fine, because we finished most of the outside chores we had planned for the weekend, and it made for awesome soup weather.  The storage shed was assembled, the grass was cut, the garage was mostly organized.... so we took advantage of a nasty "stay inside and put on comfy clothes" kind of day with french onion soup.  And now, so can you!

I've probably mentioned my love of America's Test Kitchen on this blog before.  If I haven't, here it is: I love that show.  While Marc was on his 2nd deployment to Iraq right after we got married, I bought myself most of the books they've ever published, which happily came with every season of the show on dvd for free.  I watched them ad nauseum.  I still do.  How someone can watch a chicken being roasted about 60 times within a 5 year period is beyond explanation, but here we are.  I know it makes me lame, and I don't give a fig.  I never get tired of the show.  And when a new season's worth of cookbooks and dvds shows up in my mailbox, I'm downright giddy about it.  I honestly believe it is my obsession with this show that has made me a decent home cook.  It's because they teach you the basics and the methods, not just specific recipes.  It's because they explain the science, and not just the ingredients.  When company comes over, I am confident enough in the ATK recipes to choose ones that I've never made before, because I know that as long as I follow the directions, they will come out great.  Pretty much every recipe is a winner....

....but there's an exception to every rule, right?

I can only think of a handful of ATK recipes that I was not impressed with.  And before I attract the negative attention of Christopher Kimball, let me just say, I'm sure it was operator error.  The failures are so rare that they stick out in my mind like cubes of Velveeta on a fancy cheese tray.  Chicken tikka masala-- I had SO much hope for that one, but it was bland, bland, bland.  How something could smell that fragrant and have an ingredient list that long and still have no flavor is beyond me.  Once I tested a recipe for them (yes, I am an ATK recipe tester, that's how big of a dork I am about the show) for crab cakes, and although they tasted fantastic, they totally crumbled apart into a million pieces.  Had I been serving those to guests I would have been really embarrassed.

Another let down was french onion soup.  The method involves cooking the onions in the oven.  It takes for-e-ver.  Every half hour or so you take the giant, burning hot, heavy Dutch oven out of the oven and deglaze the pan and then keep putting it back in until the onions are very dark.  And if you're like me, the fond in the pot is BURNT by the time you are done.  The burning seems to happen within seconds.  You take the pot out to deglaze and everything looks great and then moments later the fond is black.  I can't figure out how to avoid it.  Might as well call it Schrodinger's onions because at any given moment in time it's as if the fond is simultaneously burned and not, but you don't know what state it's going to be in until you take the lid off of the pot and force it to assume a position.  And even with all that long, slow cooking and how lovely and deep and brown and caramel-y those onions look, there is no flavor, except the flavor of carbon from the burnt onion fond.  I have tried their method twice because they made it look so easy on the show, and I really wanted to give it a fair shake.  But it's a LOT of work for no pay off.  That was the conclusion I came to both times.  So I'm going with a simple stove top method using boxed beef broth.  It's probably nothing like how a French cook would make it, so maybe I should call it American onion soup.  Regardless, it's less work and we love it.

As usual, I consulted my old cookbooks and found several recipes for cream of onion soup.  Most of the soups our ancestors made were apparently cream of whatever, and that didn't interest me here.  (However, I will be revisiting cream of tomato soup in the near future.  YUM.)  So I went with a version that is my own adaptation from a Ladies' Home Journal cookbook recipe.  I've been making this recipe in various ways for many years, and I've gotten it just how I like it.  Screw that burnt fond / oven method.

French (American) Onion Soup

It's very important that you use broiler safe bowls for this.  Do not put anything under a broiler that doesn't specifically say broiler safe.  You done been warned.

1/4 cup butter
1 Tbs. oil
3 lb. white or yellow onions, thinly sliced
2 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. salt
2 (32 oz.) boxes low sodium beef broth
1 1/2 cups water
2 bay leaves
1 sprig fresh thyme
18 whole peppercorns
1/2 cup brandy
more salt to taste, as much as a few teaspoons
1 baguette or loaf of french bread
8 oz. gruyere cheese, shredded
8 oz. parmesan cheese, shredded

Heat the butter and oil in a large Dutch oven over medium high heat.  Once the butter has stopped foaming, add the onions, sugar and 1 tsp. salt.  Stir to coat the onions in the butter and oil and cook until beginning to soften.  Turn the heat down to medium low and continue to cook the onions, stirring occasionally until very soft and dark brown.  This will take a while, depending on the output of your stove and even the moisture in the onions.  I've had it take anywhere from 30 minutes to about an hour.  Once a lot of the moisture is gone, the onions will probably begin to stick a little bit to the pot and leave behind tasty browned bits of fond.

After the onions are very soft and dark, pour about half a cup of the broth into the pot and scrape up the browned bits using a wooden spoon.  Once the fond is all scraped up, add the remaining broth, the water, bay leaves, thyme and peppercorns.  If you have cheesecloth handy, this would be a great time to make a little sack for your peppercorns, bay leaves and thyme sprig.  That way they are super easy to fish out when you're done.  Boost the heat to high and bring the soup to a boil.  Once boiling, turn the heat back down to medium low and simmer gently for half an hour to 45 minutes.  Add brandy and simmer for 5 minutes more.   Remove the bay leaves and thyme sprig and either fish out the peppercorns, or warn those partaking not to bite down on them.  I've left them in before and have never bitten down on one.  They are pretty easy to spot as you scoop up spoonfuls of soup.

Preheat your broiler.  Slice enough pieces of bread to cover each bowlful of soup and then toast the bread until golden.  Ladle the soup into each broiler safe bowl, top with toasted bread slices and 2 to 3 Tbs. of each kind of cheese.  Place the bowls on a sheet pan and slide the pan under the broiler.  Broil until the cheese is melted and spotty brown.  It only took about 2 minutes in my broiler, but you'll need to go by eye, not time.  Careful!  It will be HOT when you dig in.

Open-Faced Egg Sandwich

So right after school was done kicking my butt (or at least the kicking had slowed down), my medical appointments started kicking my butt.  I've been off my feet a lot lately by doctor's orders, which means there's been much less cooking going on in our house than usual.  Actually, what's really been going on is probably something akin to what happens every week in Laura's house, where I made a big potful of something and we ate out of it for several days in a row so that my husband wouldn't have to work too hard to get dinner on the table.  This was self serving, too, because it also meant I didn't have to tell my husband what to do to get dinner on the table.  Sometimes that's almost more exhausting than just doing it myself, even though he means well.  :)  Luckily I've been sitting on this recipe for a while, so while I'm hanging out here on bedrest, or couchrest, as it were, for the remainder of the day, I thought I might as well share it.

I've mentioned before how much Marc and I love to have a big, guilty pleasure breakfast on the weekends, but besides things like sweets and simple carbs - coffee cakes, doughnuts, griddlecakes, etc. - most of my old cookbooks don't have much to offer as far as breakfast recipes.  Marc would always prefer to have a lot of protein in his big weekend breakfast, especially if that protein is in the form of bacon.  And cheese.  And eggs.  And then more bacon.  After a lot of paging through old books, I did find a few breakfast casserole and strata recipes, but it's nearly impossible to make something like that for 2 people, and I wasn't interested in eating it forever.  A little more scouring revealed several breakfast sandwich and scrambled egg recipes in a few old books from around the 30s and 40s.  One scrambled egg recipe contained oysters.  Another contained sauteed corn.  I decided I didn't know how to modernize something that sounded quite that repulsive, but was glad to hear that people were scrambling eggs back in the day because I knew I could work with that.  One book had a recipe for an egg sandwich and eggs benedict on the same page and hence the idea of an open-faced egg sandwich crept into my head.  That, plus the memory of a great meal at a bed and breakfast in the Poconos a few years ago created this tasty dish.  At this particular bed and breakfast, the scrambled eggs had herbs and a hint of garlic in them, and in this case, I actually gave in to a convenience product to get that same effect.

Open-Faced Egg Sandwich

I made this as 2 servings, but you would need to be pretty darn hungry to eat the whole thing.  Marc didn't have much trouble finishing his, but I could have probably shared mine with someone, especially if we'd had a little fruit salad or something like that to go along with it.  (As it was, the dog was happy to help me finish it.)  So I guess the point is it's probably not enough for 4 people as is, but a little more than needed for 2.  If you're interested in trying to make croissants from scratch, good on ya'.  I haven't tried that yet and luckily the grocery store bakery does a fine job of doing that for me.

2 croissants
1 Tbs. butter
4 eggs
1/8 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. pepper
2 Tbs. soft cheese spread with garlic and herbs (I used Alouette Garlic and Herb Light)
4 strips thick cut bacon

Lay the croissant on the counter and place your palm flat on top of it.  Use a bread knife, held parallel to the counter, to cut each croissant in half horizontally.  Melt the butter in a 12-inch nonstick skillet until no longer foaming.  Place all 4 croissant halves, cut side down, in the skillet and cook over medium heat until they are nicely crisped.  Remove from the skillet and set aside.

In the now empty skillet, cook the 4 strips of bacon to desired crispiness and drain on paper towels.  Cut each slice in half.

Beat the eggs along with the salt and pepper.  Drain the grease from the bacon out of the skillet and pour in the egg mixture.  Add the 2 Tbs of cheese but do not just throw in 2 big gobs.  Spread it out around the pan so it can melt into the eggs evenly.  Scramble the eggs to desired doneness.

On each plate, place a bottom and top of a toasted croissant and place 2 of the halved strips of bacon on each piece.  (So each of the 4 croissant pieces will be covered with one piece of bacon, except that the bacon strip has been cut into 2 halves.  Got it?)  Evenly divide the scrambled eggs over all 4 croissant halves and serve immediately.

You will need a fork to eat this; you can't really pick it up.

Bacon Cheddar Quiche

Besides cocktails, another great thing about the weekend at our house is breakfast.  Marc and I are both everyday breakfast eaters, but of course through the week we try to stick with things like high fiber cereal and granola.  When Saturday morning rolls around, it's always good to indulge in some custardy french toast made from challah bread, some homemade buttermilk pancakes with Stonewall Kitchen's butter pecan syrup, or a bunch of eggs and cheese with a side of crispy hash browns.  This Saturday was an eggs and cheese day.  And because we had an open package of bacon in the fridge, there was no question that it would also have to be incorporated into whatever we made.

The weekend is also the only time I allow myself to indulge in coffee.  Why is coffee an indulgence, you might ask?  It's not the caffeine.  I actually drink decaf.  It's because in order to stand the taste of coffee, the only way I will drink it is if it's so loaded with cream and sugar that the coffee flavor is kind of an idea, hidden somewhere in the background.  When I'm the barista, coffee is about a thousand calorie affair, so, as my sister-in-law tells her children, it's definitely a "sometimes" food, not an "everyday" food.  So what could go better with a steaming hot mug full of vanilla caramel creamer, sugar and a splash of coffee than a beautiful slice of quiche?

Most quiches I've had use gruyere as the cheese, which I absolutely love.  But gruyere is expensive, and I don't typically keep it in the house.  I had cheddar and some green onions on hand, and since both go well with bacon, the answer seemed pretty obvious.  I kept the custard portion of the dish pretty standard.  I did make it very rich, using a full cup of heavy cream and another cup of skim milk, which is slightly fattier than 2 cups of half-and-half.  You could absolutely use the 2 cups of half-and-half, but I would not cut back on the fattiness of the dairy anymore than that or it might get watery and weepy.

Those who know me well might be shocked to learn that I actually used a pre-made refrigerated pie crust for this quiche.  This was partly because I don't really enjoy making pie crust from scratch, partly because I had a crust that had been hanging around for a while and needed to be used, and mostly because I wanted to be able to eat my breakfast before dinner time rolled around.  Often if you use a pre-made crust (and sometimes even when you make one from scratch) and bake it for a little bit first before the filling goes in, you might end up with cracks in the crust.  The best way I've found to deal with this is to brush a little bit of beaten egg on the cracks while the crust is still hot, and that should seal the cracks up pretty well.  You can even throw the crust back in the hot oven for a few minutes to really make sure that egg sets up before you add your pie filling.  If you don't take this easy step, your filling will run underneath the crust and your pie or quiche will stick to the pie pan and become a giant, ugly mess.  (No, I've never had this happen, why do you ask?)  You might have already noticed in the picture above a fault line in the side of my crust that was somewhat akin to the San Andreas.  Even that crack sealed up nicely with a few generous coats of egg.

I should warn you that this is not a good thing to make if you're hungry right now.  The crust needs to bake on its own for a little bit, and then the quiche bakes for nearly an hour, followed by an hour of cooling.  It is a great brunch dish, though, and if you're not starving, it's kind of nice for one to slowly sip and enjoy her calorie intensive coffee while it bakes, or, say, run to the farmer's market while it cools.

Bacon Cheddar Quiche

Please do not be tempted to skip the cooling part of this recipe or your eggs will run all over.  I was using a very deep pie dish.  If yours is a bit more shallow, you may have too much filling.  Remember, eggs tend to souffle, so don't overfill!  If you have a pie crust shield (see mine in the photo above) this is a great place to use it.  Bake the crust for the first 20 to 25 minutes without the shield on, then add the shield after you put the quiche filling in the crust.  I think it really helps keep the crust from getting too dark, since it's in the oven for such a long time when all is said and done.  My husband claims this would be even better with some mushrooms as well, but because of my aforementioned hatred of them, I'll let you figure that out on your own.

pie dough for a single crust pie, pre-made or make your own

2 green onions, chopped
4 slices thick-cut bacon, diced
1 large garlic clove, minced
5 eggs
1 cup heavy cream + 1 cup skim milk, or 2 cups half-and-half
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. ground black pepper
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Fit the pie dough into a pie plate and finish the edges as you like.  Place 2 layers of heavy duty foil in the pie plate and fill with pie weights or a bunch of pennies.  This will keep the empty pie crust from slumping into the pie plate as it bakes.  Bake the pie crust for about 20 to 25 minutes, until it's just slightly colored.  Remove the layers of foil and pie weights.

While the crust is baking, cook the bacon in a 10" skillet over medium-high heat.  Once the fat has begun to render and the bacon is beginning to crisp, pour off most of the fat, leaving a small amount in the pan.  Add the green onions and cook for several minutes until softened.  Add the garlic clove and cook until fragrant, about a minute.  Remove the bacon, onions and garlic from the heat and set aside.

Whisk the eggs, milk, cream, salt and pepper together in a 4 cup or larger liquid measuring cup.  Set aside until the crust is done baking.

Once the crust is done, sprinkle the bacon/onion/garlic mixture evenly across the bottom, then sprinkle the cheese over the bacon mixture in an even layer.  Give the egg mixture one more quick whisk and then slowly pour it into the crust. 

Bake for about 45 minutes, or until a knife inserted about an inch from the edge of the crust comes out clean.  Let cool for at least one hour.  A sprinkling of fresh chives on each slice is pretty and tasty!