Slow Cooker French Onion Soup

French onion soup is one of those foods that captured me utterly as a child and I've loved it since the first moment I tasted the hot, salty beef broth full of tender onions, gooey cheese, and soup-soaked bread. It quickly became one of those items that, if I saw it on a restaurant menu, I had to order it. Maybe it's that childhood memory, but even after having had it countless of times at many varied dining establishments, from the modest to the highbrow, I still think Mimi's Cafe, the location of that first taste of heaven, serves some of the best French onion soup around.



Over the years, however, I've become more conscious of my salt intake, and French onion soup everywhere tends to be oversalted. Being able to control the amount of salt is a very good reason to try and make it at home, but for whatever reason, I never have. It's not supposed to be a difficult dish to make, but on some level I found it intimidating (or the fear of failure intimidating).

Recently, Trix and I decided to resurrect our "Friday Night Dinners," except we're no longer going to adhere to any strict schedule, and our efforts are going to primarily focus on the slow cooker. This is to accommodate Trix's limited and often unpredictable schedule, but still allow us to do something we enjoy.

Trix loved this French onion soup recipe. I just found it OK, a bit too sweet (next time I probably won't add the sugar). However, the key to this dish is the broth. If you don't start with a broth you love, the results aren't going to be something you love, either. She used Better Than Bouillon; I used Trader Joe's organic beef broth. The soup cooking in the slow cooker all day made the house smell WONDERFUL. It smelled better than it tasted, actually -- but I can't wait to try this again with homemade beef broth. I'm betting it will make a huge difference.

The best thing about this experience is that I've gotten over my intimidation of making this dish!



Slow Cooker French Onion Soup (recipe adapted from A Year of Slow Cooking)

Ingredients

• 32oz beef broth
• 3 tbsp butter
• 2 yellow onions, sliced thin
• 1/2 tbsp sugar
• 1/4 cup sherry
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 4 slices of French bread
• 4 slices of Swiss cheese (or gruyere cheese)

Method

1. Heat the slow cooker to high and add the butter; it will start melting.
2. Add the onions, beef broth, sugar, salt and sherry.
3. Cook the soup on high for 6-8 hours or low for 10-12.
4. Ladle soup into oven-proof bowls or crocks.  Layer bread onto the bowls of soup and add a slice (or two) of cheese on top.  Don't worry if it hangs over the edge, it'll melt and stick to the bowl, a true French onion soup experience!
5. Place under a hot broiler for a few minutes, or until the cheese has melted and turned a lovely golden brown.

Sole Meuniere

One of the most memorable dishes from the Julie and Julia movie was the first one we see Julia Child eat: sole meuniere. It's based on Julia's recollection of the meal in the memoir My Life in France. In both the book and the movie, Julia is served a whole sole, delicately cooked in butter and lemon. It's the first time she falls in love with food.



It made me want to try sole meuniere at the earliest opportunity. I wasn't ambitious enough to attempt a whole sole, so I used fillets instead. It was still delicious, even if the presentation isn't as grandiose as in a proper French restaurant.

Sole Meuniere

Ingredients:

• 2 fillets of sole
• 2 1/2 tbsp butter
• 1/2 small lemon, cut lengthwise in half (so 2 quarters)
• about 1/4 cup flour
• chopped parsley to garnish
• salt and pepper, to taste

Method:

1. Melt 2 tbsp of butter in a pan just large enough to hold both fillets.
2. Dry the fish thoroughly and season both sides with salt and pepper. Dredge fish in flour, shaking off excess.
3. When the butter has stopped foaming, slide the fillets into the pan, "presentation side" down. Cook until golden brown and crisp, 2-3 minutes.
4. Meanwhile, thinly slice one of the lemon quarters on the horizontal (so you get little triangles).
5. Flip the fish over and cook another 2-3 minutes, until that side is also golden brown. Turn off the heat.
6. Swirl in the remaining 1/2 tbsp of butter, add the lemon slices, and top with parsley. Squeeze lemon juice from the remaining wedge of lemon over both fillets.

A Simple Meal

I recently saw the movie "It's Complicated." This is not a movie review blog so I won't go in depth about it, but food-wise, it made two big impressions on me: 1) One day I'd like to have a vegetable garden as amazingly awesome as that of the heroine; and 2) I needed to find out what croque monsieur was, and then I needed to make it and eat it.



It turns out that croque monsieur is a very simple, no-fuss affair, easy to prepare and even better to eat. It's what the French consider fast food. You really can't go wrong with a croque monsieur, unless you don't like bread. Or cheese. Or ham. But how could that possibly be?

Putting it together is simple. There's some debate about whether the croque monsieur is made with two slices of bread (similar to a grilled cheese sandwich, sometimes with additional cheese melted on top) or one. In the movie, from which I derived my inspiration, it was served as an open-faced sandwich, so that's how I made it. I used part of a baguette from the best bakery I know (West Seattle's Bakery Nouveau), slicing that in half to make two croque monsieurs, but any thick, hearty bread would work. I placed a slice of ham on each half, and topped with Beecher's Reserve (a very sharp white cheddar). Traditional croque monsieur is made with gruyere or emmenthal, but I wanted to use what I had on hand. The two halves were then baked until the cheese was melted and starting to brown. Next time I'll have to use the broiler instead; I think that would have browned the cheese much faster and with better results.

You can play with ingredients. Rub a garlic clove on the bread before adding the other ingredients. Place a fried egg on top and you have a croque madame. Include some tomato slices and you've got yourself a croque provencal. The sky is the limit! Though I think simplicity is really the key.

Finally, I had to have something to accompany the heavy bread/cheese/ham meal. A Caesar salad sounded just right. The recipe I used made a dressing that was tangy and light and flavorful -- and very unlike most restaurants' Caesar dressing. Paired together with the Croque Monsieur, it was a simple meal, but packed with delightful flavor explosions that made me look forward to the next time I could have it again.

Croque Monsieur (open faced)

Ingredients

• 2 slices of thick, hearty bread (such as a portion of baguette sliced on the horizontal then in half on the vertical)
• 2 slices of ham
• 2 slices of cheese (gruyere, emmenthal, or cheddar)

Method

1. Preheat broiler, or oven to as high as it will go, with a rack placed on the top shelf.
2. Layer ham on top of the bread, followed by the cheese. Place on a baking sheet, preferably lined with foil, to catch cheese drips.
3. Broil or bake for 5-10 minutes, or until the cheese has melted and has started to brown.

Caesar Salad (adapted from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything)

Ingredients

• 1/2 garlic clove
• 2 eggs
• 2 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 2 tbsp minced anchovies
• 6 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• dash of Worcestershire sauce
• salt & pepper
• 1/2-1 cup shredded parmesan cheese
• 1 heart of romaine lettuce, washed, cut, and dried*
• croutons, if desired
• additional protein, if desired (chicken, steak, shrimp, etc.)

Method

1. Rub the inside of your salad bowl with the garlic (discard when done). Seems like a waste of perfectly good garlic to me; next time maybe I'll just crush it into the dressing.
   
2. Bring a small pot of water to boil. Pierce the broad side of the eggs with a pin/needle. I don't know why that's necessary but I did it ... and let me tell you, piercing an egg shell with a pin/needle without breaking the whole thing open is more time consuming than it should be!
   
3. Boil the eggs for 60-90 seconds. Crack the eggs into the salad bowl -- they'll have only just started to firm up. Scoop out the white clinging to the shell. Beat well with a fork.
   
4. Gradually add the lemon juice, then the olive oil, whisking with the fork the whole time.
   
5. Add the anchovies and combine. You could also skip them entirely ... apparently the original Caesar salad didn't have anchovy in it; it only had that slight flavor from the Worcestershire sauce. I didn't have any W. sauce on hand and I do like anchovies, so I used them and skipped the W.
   
6. Add W. sauce, then add salt and pepper to taste (be pretty generous with the pepper).
   
7. Put the romaine lettuce into the bowl and toss well. Add the parmesan cheese over the top. I like mine totally incorporated so I tossed it again once I added the cheese.
   
8. Top with croutons, chicken, steak, shrimp, etc., if you're making this into a substantial meal.

* I found that there was actually way more dressing than needed, so next time I'll either double the amount of lettuce or cut the recipe in half. I prefer my salads to be lightly dressed.

Macarons -- Success at Last!

Since the last time I spoke about my attempt to make macarons, I have tried a number of times to make them, all of which have kind of blurred in my mind. My obsession with making the perfect macaron became expensive, as ingredients these days are not cheap -- particularly the almond meal. I then resolved that each attempt would actually be two attempts; I'd split the batter in half and do something slightly different with each.

The biggest problem was that my egg whites didn't seem to gloss as much as I wanted them to, as I remembered they did -- which was problematic because I couldn't even be sure that I wasn't overexaggerating their glossiness in my mind, which caused me to overbeat the whites. Then I got paranoid about how I was overbeating the whites, and made a batch in which I underbeat them. I also realized that they were probably glossier when I made David Lebovitz's macarons, because his ratio of sugar to egg white was much higher than the other recipes I'd been trying (and prefer, because I don't want them to be overly sweet). So I was probably overbeating the whites while trying to obtain the same amount of glossiness with less sugar.

My fourth attempt yielded two batches of failed macarons on opposite ends of the spectrum. I can't be sure now that the meringue had come out right in the first place (I had a couple of accidents in which a tiny bit of egg yolk might possibly have gotten into the whites, which would have kept them from whipping up properly, and also 'cooking' the whites by trying to warm them in the microwave, as I had read could be done), but regardless, the batter was not correct.

The first batch was one where I had incorporated the dry ingredients into the meringue, and folded until just combined. I was paranoid about overworking the batter, which had been the problem the very first time I tried to make macarons (and which DL had cautioned in his macaron post). You can see, they domed and were too 'wet' inside:



The second batch was from the same batter, but I added a couple drops of red food coloring to make it pink. I then had to fold the food coloring in, and doing so made the batter much thinner. That yielded extremely flat macarons that stuck to the parchment (which has NEVER happened before), had no feet, and were extremely fragile, with a 'wet' center again:



I tried again last night. I used egg whites that had been left out at room temperature for 2 days. I decided to try DL's recipe again, except without the cocoa powder, since his method was the closest I had come to making the macarons look like macarons and the meringue look glossy. His method also makes less batter, which would be less of a waste when I failed again. One change I made was that I had not liked how sweet his macarons were, so I used half the granulated sugar he calls for to make the meringue glossy. I whipped the whites to soft peaks, then slowly added the sugar as the machine was still running. I stopped it for a few seconds to scrape down sugar from the sides, then whipped them for 2 minutes. They seemed glossy-ish, but not as glossy has they had been the first time -- I figured that was OK, since I used less sugar.

The powdered sugar and almond meal had been blended in a food processor for a few seconds, and I folded the dry mixture into the meringue in two batches. I folded until everything was just incorporated. The batter was thick and did not "flow like magma," but again I was very paranoid about overworking the batter. I put half of the batter into a decorating bag (using DL's trick of putting the bag inside a tall drinking glass to make it easier). When I piped them onto the parchment my heart sank -- they were very stiff and held peaks, just like the last batch. As I did with the last batch, I put a drop of red food coloring into the second half of the batter and folded it in. However, the batter wasn't as thin as it was the last time I did this -- it fell in a thick ribbon when it slid off the spatula, and when I piped it onto the parchment, it flattened into lovely perfect circles, just as I've seen in pictures and "making macarons" online videos. I dared to let myself hope. I baked them immediately as per DL's method rather than waiting the 30 min to an hour suggested by the other recipes.

DL's recipe bakes the macarons for a longer time at a higher temperature than the other recipes I've been trying to follow, but since mine had always come out "wet" when following those recipes I figured I would give this method another shot. When I took them out of the oven I was thrilled -- the macarons from the second batch looked perfect! They were smooth and rounded, and had feet.



The macarons from the first batch didn't look so good -- they were peaked and in fact seemed to have risen so that their peaks were even more exaggerated. The one problem I saw immediately was that even though the first batter had been a nearly pure white batter, and the second had been pink, once out of the oven they both looked the same color. I think the high temperature of the oven browned the tops. :/



Once the macarons had cooled (in the sheet pan on a rack), I removed them. The first batch of macarons had taken up the prime property on the sheet pan, so the second batch had had to make do with the rest (I couldn't space them properly so some of them ended up touching). The ones that were on the parchment came off easily, as almost all the batches have. As a trial I took two of the less attractive macarons from the second batch, spread one with Nutella, and sandwiched them. I took a bite and was overwhelmed with joy -- it was perfect. The texture was everything I had read about. Even though I've never had a full-sized, real macaron, I knew immediately that this was correct, this was the right macaron. The outside was thin and delicate like an eggshell, and it gave way to a pillowy, slightly chewy but soft middle.





Even the macarons from the first batch tasted right -- they just didn't look right. The high heat and/or additional time, even though it had been bad in the sense that it had browned the outsides of the macarons too much (which isn't that surprising, since DL's recipe was for chocolate macarons, so the browning would not have been obvious in the end result), had been a good thing because it had cooked the insides of the macarons, when they had been too wet in nearly all the other batches.

Even though the successful macarons had been somewhat of a fluke, I think -- I hope -- I know what to do now to duplicate the results, and hopefully also tackle the problem of the browning, since I know I won't like chocolate macarons as much as the plain kind.



Lessons learned:

• Start with room temperature egg whites, 1-2 days old
• Don't be afraid to fold the batter as much as it needs to reach a consistency that should fall in a thick ribbon (that said, don't overwork it to the point where it becomes so thin that it falls in a thin batter or in drips)
• Try using a lower temperature but longer cooking time so that the insides of the macarons get cooked without browning the outsides
• The amount of sugar used in the meringue will determine how glossy it is -- best process seems to be to whip the whites to soft peaks, slowly add the sugar, then whip for another 2 minutes (for 2 egg whites)

Macarons, Part Two

I tried another batch of macarons today, nixing the attempt to make them chocolate for two reasons. 1) Chocolate macarons are supposedly more difficult than other kinds; and 2) I couldn't find Dutch-processed cocoa at a reasonable price (it was $12 for a small box, compared to $2.50 for a mix of regular cocoa and Dutch-processed), which could be a problem due to acidity. Best to stick with 'regular' macarons for now.

The recipe I used, other than not having cocoa, differed from the first recipe in the following ways:

• less granulated sugar
• the sugar is added to the egg whites at an earlier stage
• more egg white, but also more powdered sugar and ground almond
• the piped batter was allowed to sit out for 30 minutes before baking
• they were baked at a lower temperature, for a shorter time

The egg whites I microwaved for 8 seconds after getting them to room temperature. By sight alone they didn't seem any different, as in, they hadn't gotten opaque and were as translucent as ever, but when whipping them up I could distinctly smell an eggy smell, which I've never experienced before when making meringue (but perhaps I've never had reason to get that close for that long).

They never got glossy. I don't know the reason for this -- whether it was the microwaving or the earlier addition of the granulated sugar, or maybe something else altogether. Yesterday's batch became glossy almost immediately after adding the sugar. This one I whipped and whipped and whipped far beyond my natural inclination (and ultimately, the good of the end result), because I kept waiting for them to get glossy and they never did. I even added a little more granulated sugar at the prescribed stage from yesterday's batch to try and get them to gloss, but just didn't happen. It was frustrating. When they're glossy the texture is almost like nougat. This one never got beyond fluffy egg white.

I finally stopped the machine when the meringue was so thick/fluffy that practically the whole mass of it was stuck in the whisk. Since I'd come this far, I decided to plow on and at least see how this batch would turn out, for the sake of science.

Folding the dry ingredients into the meringue went a lot faster and easier this time than it was yesterday; the end batter wasn't as thick as yesterday's, though it was still slightly thicker than the "flows like magma" description/photos from the macaron sites I've perused.

So how did these meringues turn out?

• they were VERY puffy, so much so that a layer of air separated the top layer from the bottom layer ... they were so fragile that when you bit into one, it fell apart (unlike yesterday's, which were crunchy and hard)
• immediately after baking, each one had a nice little foot -- after drying, the tops sunk down so that the feet disappeared
• the tops of the cookies were consistently uncracked; however the batter wasn't thin enough to keep it from 'beaking,' so the baked cookies had a slight rise in their middles
• they were still sweeter than I would like

I'll make some more adjustments and try again!

The First But Not the Last

This is going to be the start of what I suspect are many posts on the same topic: macarons.

Don't confuse macarons with macaroons. Macarons are a type of French pastry that's usually pressed into a sandwich by a ganache filling in between two cookies. Macaroons involve coconut and are far denser. The basic ingredients of macarons are ground almonds, powdered sugar, and egg whites.



And like so many French pastries, they are extremely difficult to perfect. Le sigh. (See what I did there?)

I've been intrigued by them for a long time, but have never actually had a proper one until last week. I've considered buying them, but they're rather pricey (about $3.50 per, and they're small cookies), and making them seemed like I was just asking for despair and disappointment. But, as I said, I finally had one -- a miniature version, a spicy pear macaron at Crush, one of Seattle's nicer restaurants -- and I dug it. Really dug it.

So I rolled up my sleeves, girded my loins, took the plunge, enter your favorite phrase here, and made my first attempt at them -- David Lebovitz's French Chocolate Macarons. It was supposed to be 'user friendly.' And of all the reading I've done on macarons, it was relatively simple. But they didn't come out right. Macarons -- from what I've read and what I experienced (limited though it was), aren't actually crunchy, like meringue cookies. They may have a slight crunch on the outside, but the inside should be pillowy and soft, though not chewy and not too sweet. When they're baked up properly, they'll have "feet" -- the trademark of a properly made macaron.



My batch of macarons had a number of problems:

• the almond meal that I used wasn't ground fine enough (I think)
• the cookies were far too hard and crunchy
• the "feet" were inconsistent -- some cookies had it while others did not
• the tops were grainy and often cracked instead of smooth all over
• while folding in the dry ingredients to the egg whites, I could tell the batter was getting very stiff, and yet since it didn't look as described I had to keep going

For my next batch, I'm going to be trying a few changes, according to some other recipes/posts that I've read:

• keep egg whites at room temperature for 24 hours or more, or microwave for 10 seconds before using
• make sure almonds are finely ground, and sift with the powdered sugar twice to make sure everything is as fine as possible
• get a proper pastry bag/tip
• do not overwhip egg whites (DL's recipe said to whip until glossy and stiff, but others seem to disagree, that the meringue should only reach soft-medium levels)

Couple of recipes to try:

• Basic Almond Macaron Batter
• Vanilla Buttercream
• Vanilla Bean Buttercream
• Swirly Macarons

As I experiment further I'll be posting the results here!

Coq au Vin, Chocolate Pumpkin Brownies

I love French cuisine, and Coq au Vin (pronounced CŌKE oh-VANH) is one of my favorite dishes (though "coq" refers to a rooster, it's commonly prepared with hen). It's a combination of tender chicken and a rich, flavorful sauce that French cuisine is known for. It's easy to prepare, though moderately time consuming. If you have a couple of hours to spare though, it's totally worth it. And it makes your house smell divine!

The original recipe is adapted from MarthaStewart.com.

Here all the ingredients have been set up, ready for cooking! I sort of forgot that the garlic was supposed to be sliced and made a little more work for myself by mincing, but the end result was just as good.

Check out the awesome purple chicken after marinating overnight in the wine.

Fresh out of the oven and de-fatted (that should be a word).

Close up shot, mmmm. My plating skills still leave something to be desired, so that's not shown.

Ingredients

• 4 chicken thighs
• 4 chicken legs
• 2 cups full-bodied red wine, such as Cabernet Sauvignon
• Coarse salt and freshly ground pepper
• 8 ounces slab bacon, cut into 1/2-inch dice
• 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, if needed
• 1 medium onion, finely chopped
• 8 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
• 10 white pearl onions, peeled (or frozen)
• 1/2 pound small cremini mushrooms
• 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon tomato paste
• 2 tablespoons Cognac
• 1 chicken liver, coarsely chopped
• 2 bay leaves
• 5 fresh thyme sprigs (or 1 tsp dried thyme)

Method

The night before:

1. Place chicken in a large bowl, and add wine. Cover, and refrigerate overnight.

2-3 hours before serving:

1. Remove chicken from wine, and pat dry; reserve wine. Season chicken with salt and pepper.
2. Cook bacon in a Dutch oven over medium-low heat until crisp, about 20 minutes. Transfer bacon to a plate, leaving drippings in pot. (You should have about 3 tablespoons; you may need to add oil.)
3. Raise heat to medium-high. Working in batches, cook chicken, flipping once, until golden, 4 to 5 minutes per side. If you find that it's browning very quickly, lower the heat -- you don't want it to burn. Transfer chicken to a plate.
4. Preheat oven to 325°F. (You can do this earlier, but I usually do it after browning the chicken.)
5. Add onion to pot and cook 4 to 5 minutes.
6. Add garlic and cook 2 minutes.
7. Add pearl onions and mushrooms and cook until brown, 3 to 4 minutes.
8. Stir in flour and tomato paste, and cook 2 minutes. At this point, the mixture will be well blended but dry.
9. Add Cognac, and cook, stirring, 1 minute. The mixture will still be on the dry side.
10. Return bacon and chicken to pot. Pour in reserved wine, and add chicken liver and herbs. Bring to a simmer.
11. Cover the pot and place it in the oven until chicken has cooked through and vegetables are tender, 45 minutes to 1 hour.
12. Discard herbs, and skim fat from surface. Serve hot.

When I made this before, I lamented that there wasn't enough of the delicious sauce. So when I made it this time, I doubled the sauce ingredients (wine, flour, tomato paste, Cognac). Also, the bacon drippings have always been enough to cook the chicken and the rest; I've never had to add the extra oil. Alternatively, if using bacon drippings is too rich/decadent for you, you could drain it after the bacon's cooked and use olive oil for the rest of the steps.

Really wonderful served with vegetables (especially potatoes, as you can liberally spoon the sauce over them), rice, and/or pasta. And of course, crusty bread is a must.

For dessert, I made Chocolate Pumpkin Brownies, first introduced by LJer dictumsibylla. The recipe is here. Since I love the flavor of pumpkin I could use even more of it. Maybe next time I'll double the pumpkin portion.

Pictures: