♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - You know, about 15 years ago, Paris was becoming a little boring in terms of the culinary world.

Bistros were serving the same old food.

For example, oeufs mayo, or they might have a confit of duck, or they might have le ris de veau; sweetbreads.

And then all of a sudden, about ten years ago, some younger chefs showed up, and they started remaking bistro food.

So three recipes I picked out from a recent trip that I really love; one is croque monsieur.

It's a grilled ham and cheese.

A guy called Laurent duBois, he's sort of the cheese-monger of Paris, makes it in a very modern way.

And then French onion soup, you know, takes hours to make, and you have to deglaze the bottom of the pan.

At Bichettes, we found a recipe that takes just an hour.

It's cleaner and simpler.

And finally, garlic bread, which I guess really isn't French.

But we found a chef who takes garlic cloves, confits them, and then puts some goat cheese and herbs and a little dressing on top.

So let's go into Milk Street now and take a look at the new French bistro classics.

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♪ ♪ - So my name is Hortense, and we opened Bichettes three years ago.

When I met my partner, we thought directly that we should one day open a restaurant together.

And in my opinion, if you manage to make a restaurant successful in Paris, then you can manage to make it successful anywhere else, because Paris is just full of competition and restaurants.

After a year-and-a-half of brainstorming, we thought that the most important thing we had in common was our grandmas.

Our two grandmas are both called Jacqueline.

And so we thought it would be a perfect, uh, touch point and marketing point and everything point to have a restaurant for them, and about them, and about their recipes that they were cooking for us when we were young.

For example, today, the onion soup is a recipe of my grandma, Jacqueline-- my Jacqueline-- (chuckles) that she cooked for me many times because I loved it.

First, I slice the onion as thin as I can, and I start to make them cook in butter and a little bit of olive oil, also.

I add some thyme, and I add some laurel.

Thanks to thyme and laurel together, you don't have to add any spices.

As soon as I see that the onions are getting caramelized, I put a soup spoon-and-a-half of cornstarch; I mix a lot, and right after, I deglazed with white wine.

And you wait that the white wine is getting evaporated from the pan.

And as soon as you are at this step, you have to add one liter of vegetable stock.

And so now it should cook like this with a cover.

As soon as the soup is ready, I filter the vegetable stock, and I put a little bit of onions at the bottom of each soup bowls.

I add some bouillon, and then I add my favorite ingredients, the Comté cheese.

And then I put the puff pastry above the soup bowl.

We always try to do a little twist in the recipes to make it a little different in the texture, in the taste, in the cooking.

Yeah, I think that makes a soup different.

♪ ♪ - Okay, so let's talk about French onion soup.

About 15 years ago, a butcher from Paris came over to Boston, and we cooked, and he made French onion soup for lunch; he started about 8:00 in the morning; it took about four hours.

And what he did was, as you probably know, is cook down a whole mess of onions over and over and over again.

A lot of Maillard reaction, a lot of fond on the pan that he deglazed with-- I think he just used water, but he could have used stock.

And he just did that over and over again.

So when you see French onion soup, you think, well, it's onions and beef stock.

No, it's not beef stock.

It's that Maillard reaction which adds all that flavor.

Hortense took this recipe, a three- or four-hour recipe, turned it into about a one-hour recipe, simplified it and it looks great.

So we're going to start with a pound and a half onions.

We are going to use butter.

And you'll notice that we're not using a big Dutch oven, right?

Like a six quart or seven quart.

What we want to do is not evaporate all that liquid that's in the onion, because we want it to cook nice and slowly, so we don't want it to burn before it caramelizes.

So, so you can add onions right away to the oil or butter.

You don't have to wait for this to heat up.

Bay leaves, a teaspoon of salt, and a whole bunch of thyme.

We're gonna bring that up, we're gonna cover it, and we're gonna get it cooked down nice and slowly.

So we're gonna do this for about 45 minutes and then we'll move on.

So it's been about 45 minutes.

You can see a lot of Maillard reaction here, a lot of browning.

Maillard reaction is actually incredibly complicated, and most chemists don't even fully understand it.

Neither do I.

So sugars and amino acids react.

Ketosamines happen as things break down.

And then you get hundreds of other chemicals that come out of this, like diacetyl.

Now, if you've ever had a Twinkie, it has that buttery flavor; that's diacetyl.

If you have microwave popcorn, that's diacetyl.

So all these compounds are what provides all of the flavor.

And it's not caramelization that happens at a higher temperature; that's something separate.

So we have two tablespoons of cornstarch and then we're going to a third of a cup of vermouth.

So, as I said, traditionally, you might do this four or five times.

We're going to do this just once.

Now we're going to add chicken stock.

And a cup of water.

Just a little bit of pepper as well.

So we'll simmer this for about 15 minutes.

So now we get to the raft of bread with cheese on top, which, as I said in this case, is going to be puff pastry.

So when you unfold it, once it's thawed, it should be ten by 11 inches-- if it's not, you can roll it out to that size.

So I'm going to flour this a little bit and then I'm going to flip it over.

So that way, when I cut out the four rounds, they're not going to stick to the paper underneath.

This bowl happens to be just the right size, but you could measure it or use a cardboard cutout, or whatever you want to do.

So there we have one round.

We're just going to put that over here on parchment paper.

So we're going to throw these in the fridge while we finish up the onions, and we'll be right back.

Now for the fun part; we're going to start by whisking this egg yolk to attach the puff pastry to the soup bowls.

Now, these are 12-ounce oven safe bowls.

If you don't have the exact size or whatever, you can still do this recipe.

You can cut out the puff pastry and just put it on top if it doesn't fit perfectly, or bake them separately and serve them with the soup.

I think if you're going to go to the trouble to make this, it's not hard.

I would go out and get 12-ounce containers because it's going to look so great with the puff pastry on top and domed.

So Comté or Gruyere?

Gruyere is Swiss.

Comté is from the Jura, which is on the border of France and Switzerland.

We're going to put about a quarter-cup of this in each.

We're going to save a little because we're going to put a little bit of this on the top.

So now let me put the egg yolk on, and I'm also gonna do just a little bit here.

That's good.

Now, just a comment before we go on.

This does look like the French onion soup you get at a bistro, right?

It does look dark and has great onion flavor.

So with just an hour of work, with that slow reduction in that Maillard reaction, we're getting a ton of flavor.

So it's not quite as thick and as rich.

But I think that's what makes this a better recipe.

It's actually a little lighter, which I really like a lot.

And we're not skimping on the cheese.

Now, we're gonna put the puff pastry on, just like if you're doing a pie, for example, just crimping it on the sides like that.

Let me put the egg yolk on.-- looks highly professional to me.

And the final touch, a little cheese on the top.

Good to go.

375 oven for 25 to 30 minutes.

(chuckling): Wow, I mean, you know, it doesn't get that much better.

Let me-- it's gonna be hot.

So let me just show you that, that really does look like a three-hour soup, right?

Mm.

If you like more subtle food, a little bit lighter, this is better than the classic.

So this is from Bichettes in Paris, Hortense Thoreau.

And I'd like to thank her reimagined classic French onion soup.

♪ ♪ - The words puff pastry strike fear in a lot of home cooks.

But don't fear; I've got a couple great tips for you to make you look like a pro.

So when you purchase puff pastry, it's going to be folded.

But when you're working with it, you want to remember to thaw it out well.

Thawing puff pastry, you want to remember: slower is better.

Put it in the refrigerator overnight, keep it frozen before you're ready to use it and then refrigerate to thaw.

You put it out in a hot kitchen to thaw it out quickly, sometimes the butter can start to melt in the dough, and then you're going to lose that layering action that happens when it hits the oven and the steam is released.

Now, rolling puff pastry.

Try your best to use very, very even pressure.

The reason is if you're rolling and you're putting too much pressure on one side, and you roll it too tight, what can happen is it will rise unevenly.

Now, another very important tip about puff pastry is trimming off the edges.

You want to always cut a fresh cut through the dough.

This is going to allow it an even playing field to rise evenly all the way across.

This piece of puff pastry was rolled on one side and the other side was untrimmed; you can see it's sort of sealed together, and that prohibited the rise.

And look at the difference.

So if you've got these scraps, don't throw them out.

I like to just ball them up, roll them out, take a little cookie cutter, cut out some rounds, and you can flavor these however you like.

I brush a little melted butter on them, cinnamon sugar, or you can go savory route, mix a little smoked paprika with salt, or even za'atar.

You've made your own beautiful little crackers.

Super fun, and you didn't waste one inch of that expensive puff pastry; this is a za'atar one.

I put that on some tomato soup.

So whether you're using puff pastry to cover a crock of French onion soup or making easy little tart shells to fill with berries and cream, don't be afraid of puff pastry; it's really not that hard.

Just keep it cold, bake it in a hot oven, and be patient.

♪ ♪ - (speaking French): - It's perfect.

Absolutely perfect.

♪ ♪ - During a recent visit to Paris with master fromager Laurent duBois, we were reminded just how great a well-crafted croque monsieur can be.

We wanted to make a version that was simple, fuss-free, that you could make even on a weeknight.

And we had two challenges.

One was, how could we make more than one sandwich at a time without using something like a panini press, which most people don't have?

It's a great thing, but not everyone has one.

And how could we avoid making a béchamel sauce?

A béchamel sauce is a cooked, flour-based sauce that is usually used for the creamy cheese sauce that you see on top of a croque monsieur.

Laurent actually didn't use a topping on his sandwich, but we thought it might be nice to find something that would complement the ham and cheese; so what we came up with, after trying a few things, was crème fraîche; it was the perfect ingredient to add our spices and our cheese to.

It melted beautifully.

It got a really bubbly, beautiful brown top.

So I'm going to show you how to make that now.

We are adding mustard, which is an ingredient you would often use in béchamel.

Sometimes they use dried mustard.

Sometimes they use Dijon, which is what we're using here, and nutmeg, which is also an ingredient that they use a lot in a béchamel sauce.

So we thought we want that characteristic flavor, but not all the work.

And a little bit of salt and some pepper, and we just whisk that up, and then we're gonna add our cheese.

We're using Gruyere, but any Alpine-style cheese would work great with this.

You could use Comté, which is also a cheese that you would use in French onion soup.

So it would work perfectly in this.

So I'm gonna add our cheese, and I'm just gonna mix this together, and that's it.

Laurent actually made a triple decker croque monsieur, and we thought, why not?

It's a little bit extra, but it's perfect for a weeknight dinner.

So what we have is 12 slices of bread.

You want to use a bread that's a little bit sturdy, and not too fluffy and cottony.

What I'm gonna do first is take four of these slices, and I'm gonna put them butter-down on a broiler-safe baking sheet.

We're gonna start with about a tablespoon of this cheese spread on each slice, and then, it is a ham sandwich, so we're gonna add some ham.

And, you know, find the best ham that you can.

There's not a lot of ingredients here.

You want to make sure they're all really good.

So we're gonna stack ham on each slice, and then we're gonna take four slices of bread that have not been buttered.

I'm just gonna lay those on top.

More cheese.

Get that right to the edge.

And then we're gonna finish with the rest of our ham.

And then we're gonna put our last slice of bread on.

And I could have buttered these when I buttered the other ones, but I'm just gonna do it right here.

And then we're gonna put these in a 400-degree oven on the middle rack for about ten minutes, so we can start that cheese melting, and then we'll flip them.

So these have been in for ten minutes.

You can see things are already starting to happen.

The cheese is starting to melt.

I'm gonna flip them over and get the cheese melting all the way through and the bottoms browned all the way.

And that's gonna take about seven to nine minutes.

So I'm gonna put them back in the oven.

Okay, here they are, completely browned, beautiful.

I can see all the cheese is melted in the middle.

And then the final touch, which is our cheese topping.

And these are gonna go back in under a broiler for about a minute, minute-and-a-half.

Here they are; browned, bubbly, gorgeous.

Put them on a rack to cool for about five minutes before you eat them.

I can't wait, so I'm gonna take one right now-- but look at how beautiful!

So, no béchamel.

We've got this beautiful bubbly top.

That's what's so great about the crème fraîche.

A lot of times when you use crème fraîche, you want to substitute sometimes with sour cream.

Don't do it for this, because the sour cream will curdle under the broiler.

So... ooh, look at that.

We got the delicious cheese and ham all melted together.

The bread is really toasty.

So good-- the ham is nice and salty.

Cheese is all melted.

A little bit of tang from the crème fraîche and the mustard, a little bit of the nutmeg.

This is delicious, give it a try.

♪ ♪ - I've been in Paris for seven years, working in quite a few different restaurants.

But before that, I lived in London, I started out in, like, Michelin-star restaurants, and then after that, I moved to France.

Where I think maybe like, 15 years ago, maybe quite a lot of young people came to Paris that wanted to learn to cook and progress through their career.

And they found themselves in positions like, being in charge of kitchens and with the amazing produce that you have here and being quite playful with the food.

Generally, it is like a city where you can express yourself.

So we take fresh garlic, and we cut the bottoms off, and then we confit it in some really good olive oil with some peppercorns, some thyme, some bay leaves, some rosemary, for, like, two hours, as slowly as possible, until it gets nice and sweet.

It's like onions and garlic, they have a lot of sugar in it.

And the slower you cook it, the more liquid you take out of it, and the sweeter it gets.

We put a little bit of the garlic oil on the bread.

I like to get it with quite a lot of color, almost burnt.

So you get, you know, you have a lot of flavor, like toasted flavor.

And then you have fresh goat cheese.

And so we have the goat cheese on the toast, we have the confit garlic, and then some fresh herbs, which you can use whatever you want, really.

I like to use lovage and mint.

Put some nice aromatic honey on it on top of it, some chili flakes for a bit of a kick, and that's it.

Plenty of the oil as well, on top.

And then you just eat it with all the garlic on the toast with your hands.

It's quite fun to squeeze the garlic onto the toast.

The food we do here, I don't really particularly want it to be like boring, fine dining food.

It's a bit playful, it's a bit fun, and, you know, I think this style of cooking is slowly starting to take over.

- So I have a long relationship with garlic bread.

From the time I was born, continuing into today, I have two fake moms.

Their last names are Vitello and Pompeo.

And I have a visceral, visceral childhood memory of those long loaves of oddly soft bread smothered in butter with lots of minced garlic and a little sprinkling of parsley and ripping into that hot from the oven.

And that is a memory that I hold dear to my heart.

So messing with garlic bread, I take very seriously.

However, recently in Paris, we went to Robert Restaurant and we had a garlic bread that won't replace Mama Vitello and Mama Pompeo's, but will be a welcomed addition to my garlic bread repertoire.

So we're starting with four heads of garlic, but instead of mincing it, we're going to confit it, which means we're going to cook it for a long time in olive oil.

You want to slice off the top third, and make sure that all of the cloves are exposed.

We're going to put these into a loaf pan and cook them for over an hour, up to an hour-and-a-half or two hours, really slowly, and then aromatics.

I think they're pretty important.

You don't need to use any, but Jack Bosco Baker, at Robert Restaurant, did use thyme and bay.

I sometimes use a whole dried chili.

You could use some fennel seeds; just keep it pretty simple.

And then a whole cup of olive oil.

If all of your garlic heads don't fit flat in your loaf pan, that's fine.

What you do want to make sure is that they're cut-side down, and that you cover the pan tightly with foil.

So this goes into a 275-degree oven, low for at least an hour-and-a-half, and you can even have it go a little longer.

Just check it and make sure that the bottom of the heads of garlic aren't burning at all.

Oh, see how these are just falling out of there?

So we're going to remove these garlic heads and put them in here.

And now you have this gorgeous byproduct of garlic confit-infused garlic oil.

Now let's make our garlic bread.

So the bread you choose doesn't matter.

This was in France, so we have baguette.

You can use bigger pieces, smaller pieces.

We want to get some char.

We really like that Jack, the chef at Robert, got a nice char on his bread, but that does mean that you can go from char to burnt toast very quickly.

So this is the, you know, four minutes you gotta pay attention, and then you just brush them with your garlic oil.

You want to brush both sides of the bread because we'll flip them halfway through so they get toasted evenly on both sides.

This is a pretty robust dish.

It's simple, but it packs a punch.

So I love this as a standalone salad course or a really beautiful and impactful sort of appetizer if you want to make it a little bit more dippy, which I'll show you later.

But first, let's broil these toasts, and keep an eye on them.

I actually like to have the rack not super high against the element.

A little distance like this, six to eight inches, gives you some margins, and I'm a big fan of margins in the kitchen.

Everything will work out better.

All right, a lot of people would say, this is done.

This is beautiful and golden brown.

We want to take it a little further.

We want to make sure there's some nice dark brown.

But I'm going to watch it like a hawk.

We're going give it, like, 20 seconds, and I'm going to check them again.

A-ha.

See, I counted to seven.

And we're in a much better place.

This where we're getting nice and golden brown here.

That's great.

That's what you're looking for; some will be more toasted, some will be a little less toasted.

See, this really illustrates why you want to toast both sides.

You don't get the same experience if one side is sort of mushy and one side is toasty.

So back in the oven.

You're actually watching them get tan, right now.

They're done.

Okay, so now we have our garlic-infused, slightly charred, beautifully toasted toast, and we're gonna let those cool down a little bit while we make the next elements.

So first, our goat cheese.

You want about four ounces of goat cheese.

You can just serve it plain, but we like to add a little bit of extra flavor, so we're gonna add some lemon zest.

Here's one place, though, where I wouldn't put in too much lemon zest.

If you put in a lot of lemon, you're gonna overwhelm this really mellow, beautiful garlic flavor and the herbs, so err on the side of a little less, and then if you want more, you can add more.

And then you also want to add in black pepper.

Here's where I think you can have a little fun with this recipe.

I really like different black peppers, and I can imagine-- there's one black pepper I love called comet's tail, and it's got a little bit of a smoky, floral flavor that I think would be really beautiful with the lemon zest and the herbs.

It's the only spice that we're putting in this dish.

So as a spice, you really can play up that singularity.

Right, so this is the contrast.

I think every great recipe has one point of contrast, sort of a counterpoint.

And this is a really bold, bright side salad; it's fresh herbs.

We're using a mixture of mint and parsley.

You could change it up.

We're also going to add in some thinly-sliced shallot, A little salt.

A little pepper, and then that lemon juice.

Remember, you can always add more.

And we're just going to let this sit.

Now, for the star of the show.

You can use tongs, but Jack Baker, the chef at Robert, his whole sort of philosophy is just to loosen up and have a little more fun.

So he actually serves this with the whole heads at the table.

And each diner squeezes their own garlic confit onto their toast.

I love that idea, you can totally do it.

If you don't want to have your guests do that, then you can go ahead and squeeze what garlic has not already fallen out of the heads of garlic onto the plate.

All right, let's build a couple toasts.

If you were gonna serve this as a fun appetizer, I would just put the confit and the cheese and the salad in their own separate bowls and let people build their own or even just take a toast and dip.

But if you're gonna present it as a nice little first course or something, like that, this is what I recommend.

Start with some cheese, and then we're gonna put on a little of our garlic, a little chili flake, and then we're gonna drizzle a little honey on top.

And now we're gonna add our beautiful little salad.

The counterpoint.

Mm, it's got so many layers of flavor.

First, you get the sweetness of the honey, which mellows out the garlic underneath.

And then the little bit of funk of the goat cheese comes through, and the herbs are perfect.

So this makes a gorgeous garlic bread, very different from the one I grew up with.

And it's all because of this garlic confit.

I would happily serve this to Mama Vitello and Mama Pompeo, and I think they'd be delighted.

You can get this recipe and all the recipes from this season of Milk Street TV at MilkStreetTV.com.

- Recipes and episodes from this season of Milk Street are available at MilkStreetTV.com, along with shopping lists, printer-ready recipes, and step-by-step videos.

Access our content anytime to change the way you cook.

- The new Milk Street Cookbook is now available and includes every recipe from our TV show.

From cacio e pepe and skillet spanakopita, to Brazilian-style carrot cake and Thai coconut soup, the Milk Street Cookbook offers bolder, fresher, simpler recipes.

Order your copy of the Milk Street Cookbook for $27, 40% less than the cover price.

Call 855-MILK-177 or order online.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following: - MOWI Salmon comes ready to cook, ready to grill, ready to season, or pre-seasoned and ready to eat.

An assortment of flavors for an assortment of people.

MOWI Salmon.

- We pass down traditions here.

We create and connect.

We enjoy special moments.

Some simple, some grand.

The heart of your home is the kitchen.

The heart of your kitchen is The Galley.

♪ ♪