Not So Parisian Onion Soup!

Tags

Around My French Table, Dorie Greenspan, Emmental cheese, French Onion Soup, homemade bread, onion soup

They say every pregnancy is different… and boy is this one different! Baby is doing everything noticeably earlier and he/she has been kicking all day! But never when Mei is laying over the belly… hmmm… surprise attack possibly headed her way?

At any point, the reason of mentioning this is that today I had planned a nice meal of pulled pork sandwiches, baked beans and of course, our French Fridays assignment, French Onion soup! We brined and rubbed the pork down and put it in the oven early this morning so it could slowly come to temperature and cook into its tender-falling-apart-ness that makes a pulled pork sandwich just so delicious and amazing, the beans went into the crock pot to sit all day and stew into something worthy of the pulled pork and later this evening, I started in on the onion soup.

just starting to turn colors...

the color of caramelization we landed on...

One thing is certain, if Dorie says – DO IT. Usually I push her directions to the max and if she says to caramelize to a deep golden brown, I push it until it is nearing black but when it feels like the baby is trying to make it’s way out this early and putting pressure in places it shouldn’t be yet, you just don’t have the energy or patience to wait out the deep golden color you want. So I took my insanely huge pile of onions and stuck them in the dutch oven, managing to cook them for about an hour and a half before calling it good enough. And if the undue pressure from the baby wasn’t enough, it was nearing 8pm and the 3 lb pork shoulder that went into the oven around 11am that should have been done by 4pm still was about 30 degrees from finished so the husband unit was begging for any food to be done so we could eat since he usually goes to bed around 9pm to get up in time for work.

Rapunzel color onion soup

*wince* So I just went ahead and called it good when the onions turned a nice, golden hue – but they were certainly not the “deep golden” color that Dorie suggests and that I had been aiming for. But between the baby and the husband, it was just time to get the soup to the point where we could eat it and focus on trying to get the pork to be finished as well.

fitted with bread

As it turned out, the soup was a light golden hue, smelling of sweet, caramelized melting onions and we fitted our little ramekins with a portion of homemade white country bread that I baked up a couple of days ago, toasted it and covered it all with Emmental cheese and slid it into the oven.

topped with cheesy goodness!

The ramekins came out with golden, crispy edged cheesy and puffed bowls of onion soup – it was delicious! I just wish we had the patience to wait out the onions a bit longer… but as it was, our pulled pork wound up being roast pork sandwiches since we just didn’t want to wait until near midnight for something should have been done hours ago. The beans, I am happy to report were a great side, even for the onion soup, and while the onion soup wasn’t truly Parisian nor was it piping hot – it was worth the effort and certainly worth making again in the future when I can give the onions all the time they want!

To see how the other Doristas fared with this one, click here. To join our group or to get the recipe, find yourself in possession of Dorie Greenspan’s “Around My French Table” and join in the fun! It’s delicious and worth it!

Chocolate Truffle Tart

Tags

Baking with Julia, chocolate tart, chocolate truffle tart, Dorie Greenpsan, Julia Child, tart, truffle tart

Let me just bullet this week’s thoughts on this Tuesdays with Dorie recipe! I will follow it up with my photos… try not to drool …. I said “try”…

• I thought I had all the necessary ingredients, because these are all items I keep in stock – usually in large quantities
• Turns out, I was two eggs short.
• I usually have 3 dozen eggs in my fridge at any given time, but we had just made a bunch of hard-boiled eggs for egg salad …. guess that left me with 6 eggs, since I used four for a lemon poppy seed cake after the egg salad
• The egg salad IS FINGER-LICKIN’ GOOD!
• So I only used 6 egg yolks in the tart
• 60-85% chocolate bricks fill one side of the top shelf of my fridge. There were only a few bricks of white and milk chocolate left after my last chocolate baking adventure.
• Mei and the baby in the belly have completely worn me out today and by the time dinner had passed and I got around to baking the tart, I was concentrating really hard to read and re-read the directions
• I used a food processor to make the dough and it came together wonderfully! I totally suggest this over the hand mixing – it just seems like too much work when you can just hit “pulse” a few times and viola!
• I have now tempered chocolate so many times that I could do this in my sleep
• The process of folding the egg yolks and sugar mixture into the tempered chocolate nearly put me to sleep, but it was smooth and decadent looking.
• Couldn’t find any biscotti (not really popular here) so I used Biscoff cookies that are a cinnamon spice cookie to be enjoyed with coffee and purchased to re-make the cinnamon crunch chicken that we so thoroughly enjoyed for French Fridays with Dorie awhile back
• Like sometime last year. It’s delicious. You should try it.
• You will first have to buy a copy of “Around My French Table” first… or bribe me to give you the recipe.
• And if you have just gone to Amazon to buy your copy of that book, you might as well join our group, French Fridays with Dorie. Our tight-knit group is fabulous and you know you want to be “in”
• I used a grown-up size fluted tart pan since I didn’t feel up to a visit to the kitchen store to buy a bunch of mini-tart pans -if they just happened to have them that day…
• The dough had to be patched a bit in the pan, but it worked out well and my fingers smelled so completely edible at the end!
• I kept the bottom on the tart pan and made sure the tart dough was cooked through before adding the filling and it worked out magically
• Oh I did poke the bottom of the tart dough with a fork for some catharsis.
• It worked.
• It also woke me up just a bit.
• Mei woke up from her nap and very, very quietly crawled up behind me and grabbed my calf and scared the living daylights out of me in my tired state while I was spooning the filling into the tart pan.
• I very nearly kicked her in the face.
• Mei is fine. Don’t worry, she was all smiles and very excited to see me baking something.
• She tends to get overly excited if she sees the oven door open.
• The tart cooled on a wire rack to room temperature
• Then we stuck it in the fridge since we read about people running into “runny” tart fillings… we don’t need that kind of trouble
• Mei and I thoroughly enjoyed the chocolate tart for a midnight snack in the wee-hours of Tuesday morning with some rose tea with milk over the latest episode of “Criminal Minds”
• A little piece of heaven… tasted like a cross between the decadence of a brownie with small bits of cookie and sweeter chocolate with crisp bits of tart dough all around. A perfect midnight treat!

crumbly tart dough!

crunchy, decadent "truffle" chunks for the filling

tart dough, baked and ready for filling

smelling FANTASTIC right about nowPatella followed me around, begging for some cheese since she doesn't care for chocolate

I used a really hot knife out of the dishwasher... it looks gooey and melted a bit but it was still worth every forkful!

Mei learned to clap last week and was very happy once I had a slice ready to eat!

a perfect treat

The recipe is not posted on our blogs to encourage you to purchase your own copy and join in the fun – but if you are a rebel, or can’t wait then the recipe can be found on our weekly hosts’ blogs at: A Whisk and a Spoon, Spike Bakes, Good Eats & Sweet Treats, and Cookbook Habit.