French Fare

Bonjour, y'all. I'm Paula Deen, and today I'm making some of my favorite French food

When Michael and I took our very first trip to Paris a little while ago

we just could not believe how good the food was. So I'm going to duplicate some of these dishes, and first of all

I'm going to make a croque madame, which is like our grilled ham and cheese sandwich

only it's got a twist, and then a cheesy and savory French onion soup

that's gonna satisfy every soup lover around. And for dessert chocolate banana crepes

this is gonna melt in your mouth. So y'all run, grab your passport, and pack your appetite

because we're having fabulous French fare. Hey, y'all

You've caught me standing up here in my kitchen reminiscing about a very special time

that's going to be with me the rest of my life in my heart and in my memory

And that's the opportunity that Michael and I had to go to Paris

You know, you've always heard or I've always heard, Paris is for lovers, and I think that is so true

So I thought, what better time than to try to reproduce some of the things that Michael and I had while we were there

So the first thing that we're going to make today is so super simple

and it's like our grilled ham and cheese sandwich, and this is called croque madame

I'm just going to give this a light spray. I'm taking a regular sourdough bread

We're just going to butter it. So I'm going to start by putting that down

So I'm going to do, I think, like two sandwiches I'll be able to fit on here

So on our bread, I'm going to add some cheese, and you can use a Gruyere

You can use Swiss. Any kind of cheese that you want because basically, you know

they had all these fancy names for this, but it's really kind of ham and cheese sandwich

All right, now to this, I'm going to add the ham. And these sandwiches really are a male and female sandwich

And I'll be showing you what I mean by that as we go along

I get teased a lot, y'all, because I refer to my food as he's and she's

Well, you know what? I found out in Paris they do the same thing. People write me all the time and say

Well, Paula, why do you call that a him? And why do you call that a her

Well, this sandwich that I'm making right now is actually has a female and male version

Now this version, at this stage of the sandwich, would be a male

It would be a croque masseur. But when I get finished with it

it's going to be a croque madame. And do you know what makes it a female

I'm going to put an egg on top of it. And the egg kind of looks like a breast

So that's why the French call the sandwich with an egg, Madame

And now I'm going to slather this top with a homemade mayonnaise

All right. Now I'm going to top this mayonnaise with some more cheese

and then I'm going to run this sandwich under the broiler and melt the cheese on top of it

So I'm going to run this under the broiler and we're just going to broil that for a minute

All right, so I'm going to leave my door open on my oven

because I don't want it to get too hot and burn on me. And my pan's ready, so I'm just going to put me an egg in here

So let's check on our sandwiches and see. Take a look at this, y'all

How beautiful is that? All right, now let's see. Our egg is ready

So let's make this the Madame. And this is gonna be our masseur

Because he doesn have an egg he totally flat Aren those beautiful looking

Now, if you really, really wanted to spiff up these sandwiches, you could make a wonderful bechamel or some kind of white sauce

and just kind of ladle on top of that egg, like, or even a hollandaise sauce, you know, like Eggs Benedict

It would be yummy. All right, I think I'm gonna sample this one, and I wanna just cut into this egg and show

y'all what it looks like. How delicious does that look? Oops

It fell in the butter. Mmm. This is absolutely out of this world

The homemade mayonnaise on it gives it such a wonderful, rich flavor

And the fact that you have so many layers of cheese, and then, of course, the surprise of the egg

But we've only just begun, y'all, because the next dish I'm going to be doing is a fabulous French onion soup

So I'll see y'all back in a minute. Welcome back, y'all

Today is a French show. I'm reliving my visit to Paris, and it was fabulous

And I think there's one thing that Michael Groover and I both agree on

The onion soup is probably one of our favorites, and that's what I'm going to be making today

Now, I'm taking about eight onions, and I'm slicing them very thin

and I'm going to add them to the pot, and about a fourth or a third of a cup of oil's already in that pot

and I'm going to caramelize these onions down, which will take us about 20 minutes to do that

But you'll want to cut your onions rather on the thin side, not have real thick pieces of onion

In fact, I've got a pot over here where I've already caramelized the onions, so we're ready to go with this soup

And you can see how these onions really cook down a lot

All right, now I'm going to add eight cups of a nice beef stock

Now this can be a homemade beef stock or it can be a canned

And to this pot now, I'm going to add a couple of cloves of minced garlic

I'm going to add a bay leaf. I'm going to add about a half a teaspoon of dried thyme

And I'm going to add a fourth of a cup of white wine. A little fresh ground pepper

And a little salt. Now, you'll want to be careful with your salt because if I made a homemade stock

it might not be as salty as like a canned stock. And this is where my French onion soup is a little different from most people's

I cooked some short ribs yesterday, and I've got some left over

So I'm going to cut this up in small, small pieces. All right

And I'm going to add this to our broth and our onions

You know, I've still got a few pieces of short rib in here with the bones

so I think I'm just going to throw those down in the pot and just pull that extra flavor off those bones

And then we're gonna let that cook for about 20 minutes. In fact, I have a pot ready back here for us

So I'm gonna let that cook for about 20 minutes. But in the meantime, let's see what we've got here

Oh, look at the richness of that soup. Alright, so our soup's ready to go

I've got a nice loaf of French bread over here, and I'm just going to cut it

So I want this bread to kind of fit that bowl, so I'm going to cut it diagonally

so it'll take up more coverage on the top of the soup

And I'm just going to butter this. And there's a couple of different ways you can do this

You can do this in the oven. You can do this earlier in the day and then just heat it right back up

or you can do it in a skillet the way I'm fixing to do it

And because of my love of butter, I'm going to butter both sides of my bread

Now I have chosen for my soup today to cover my French bread with a Gruyere cheese which I think is what most French cover their soup with

I'm not quite sure on that one, but I do know that over there they love Gruyere

and they use a lot of it. But you could also use a stringy mozzarella that would be good

I'm just going to flip these over, toast them real good on both sides

Now I'm going to just reach in here, and I'm not going to take out the whole short ribs that were dropped in for the flavor and the richness

Now I'm just going to float our piece of toast on top, and I'm going to cover it with a Gruyere cheese, just like that

And I like lots of cheese. In fact, I like a little soup with my cheese toast

Now, I'm going to just transfer this now under the broiler. Here we go

And this is going to take a steady hand for me to do this

because I don't want to slosh out my soup. Whoops, like I just did, y'all

All right, I'm just going to slide that in, And I'm going to watch this very, very closely

because I have my crock of soup up pretty high underneath the brawler

and I don't want it to burn. But I promise you, when you come back in about two minutes

this soup is going to be ready, and we're going to taste it, and it's just going to be sensational

And then guess what else? A chocolate banana crepe. No wonder Michael liked Paris

It was full of crepe. Welcome back, y'all

Today is all about French food. And I've got my French onion soup that's ready to come out of the oven

Look at that Gruyere cheese and that buttered French bread. This is going to be so incredibly delicious

Look. It's so wonderful

But it could still stand to cool off just a little, so while that's cooling off

let's move on down here and get started with our crepes. Now the first thing we're going to do is make our batter

because this batter actually has to sit about 20 minutes, And that's because we need it to flatten out and all the bubbles leave

But it's very, very simple to make. I've sifted one cup of all-purpose plain flour

and I'm going to add one whole egg, and then I'm going to add the yolk of a second egg

And then I'm going to slowly add some milk, and I'm going to add a little bit at the time

because if you add a lot of liquid to a bowl of flour

there's a good chance it's going to lump on you and I don't want this full of lumps

Now, I've got one tablespoon of butter melted back here that I'm going to add to our batter

All right. I'm going to add about a half a teaspoon of vanilla flavoring to our batter

and we're going to let that sit there for about 20 minutes. And I've already got some that's been mixed

and I'm using a regular omelet pan, and I've already sprayed it with a nonstick spray

And now I'm going to add about a fourth of a cup of batter to that

And I'm immediately going to roll that batter around in that pan to just get a thin coating all over the bottom

Okay. Now I think our crepe is ready to turn, and I'm going to turn this crepe by using an offset spatula

All right, look how beautiful that crepe is. This was done without a crepe machine

And it takes about 60 seconds to get it to this brownness

Now, I may have had too much batter in that one, but I didn't want to shortchange this one

because I shortchanged the last one by about a teaspoon, and that looks perfect right there

Now, I think while that's cooking, I think I'm gonna start putting our crepe together

And I'm gonna do that by putting a little chocolate hazelnut spread onto our crepe Look at that All right now on of our chocolate I going to add a thin layer of banana slices Doesn that look yummy Alright and I going to

fold this up and then fold it again. So that's half. Oh, and I need a longer reach here

All right, now I'm going to take a scoop of my chocolate and spread out onto the crepe

and I'm just going to put a thin slice of bananas. All right, fold in half and in half again

I think I'm going to try these while they're still kind of warm, and I'm going to put just

a little dab. Well, your dab and my dab may be different, but I'm going to put a little dab of fresh

sweetened whipped cream, and I'm going to dust it with powdered sugar

And then I think I'm going to swirl just a little bit of chocolate on top of that

Look at the banana peeking out of there. You know, that was better than Paris's

So I think we could all save ourselves a lot of money, stay home

and eat the best food you can get your hands on right in your own kitchen

what could be better after you eat a crepe? Maybe mayonnaise? I'm going to show you a way to make homemade mayonnaise in just a second

and it don't get no better than homemade mayonnaise. Well, maybe chocolate banana crepe

Y'all, you won't believe what I'm sitting here looking at. What I have is an old-timey mayonnaise maker, and it's made of glass

So I'm going to quickly make a homemade mayonnaise, and mayonnaise is so easy to make

I'm just going to separate the eggs, and I'm going to start with two egg yolks

I'm going to put in two tablespoons of Dijon mustard. I'm going to give a squirt of lemon juice to those two ingredients

and I'm going to put in a little fresh pepper a little bit of salt

and I'm just going to beat these until that starts to really get light and fluffy and frothy for me

now I'm going to add some oil You know, it's hard to make things like this strictly because we only have two hands

It would be nice to maybe come back as an octopus when we're doing things like this

I could get a lot of work knocked out. All right, and I'm going to just keep on filling this with oil until I've used all of it, and we've got mayonnaise

Now, if you don't have an old mayonnaise maker, you can always do this in a food processor or a blender, and it'll work out completely wonderful

In fact, it might even be a little easier. All this food is so delicious that I prepared today

and it brings back so many wonderful memories for me that Michael and I shared in Paris

Oh, the crepes. I've never seen so many crepes in all my life

But I have to tell you, I think the banana and the hazelnut chocolate

was just so much better than what I had in Paris. Don't mean to offend anybody

but they're just that yummy. And the French onion soup, you'll find if you'll put a little bone in there

and a little beef, it will really kick up that French onion soup

like you've never had before. And, of course, they have really done something spectacular

to an ordinary grilled ham and cheese sandwich. They have turned this sandwich into a croque madame

that is so delicious. I hope that maybe one day y'all will get to Paris and see the sights, smell the smells, and taste the food

But if you can't get there, you can always try some of these recipes

I think you're going to just love them. So until next time, y'all, I send you love and best dishes from my Paris kitchen to yours