(lighthearted music)
♪ Ba, ba, ba, ba, ba ♪ ♪ Ba, ba, ba, ba, ba ♪ - Greetings, my beautiful lovelies. It's Emmy. How are you? It's great to see you, and welcome back. Today, I'm going to be
making a very simple and humble sandwich that
comes from James Beard. Now, if you don't know James Beard, James Beard, as in the James Beard Award, is a legend in the culinary world. And this sandwich comes from him, but it is very, very simple. It doesn't even have any fancy techniques or anything at all. Well, you can make it
as fancy as you want. There are a little fancy touches to it, but it's very simple. We are making an onion sandwich. And I learned about this
from another culinary legend and that is Jacques Pepin. And if you don't know Jacques Pepin, he is someone that was
really important to me in my culinary life. I have no real culinary training except watching lots of Food Network and PBS on Saturday mornings
with my brother and my mom. We would watch the entire
morning set (laughs) and into the early
afternoon of cooking shows, this was before the Food Network, and thoroughly enjoyed it. We would record them on VHS. We learned a lot from Jacques. Jacques, such a great teacher, to this day, still teaching. I follow him on Instagram,
as you should as well. But what I really love about Jacques is that he makes it
accessible to everyone. So, thank you, Jacques. Thank you, James Beard, for this recipe. It sounds very simple and intriguing, and it reminds me of some sandwiches that I made that include peanut butter and some condiment sandwiches. They were both Hard Time-themed episodes that I made using condiments
like mustard, mayo... to make a very simple sandwich because that's what
you had in your pantry. Alright, I digress. Let's make James Beard's onion sandwich. So of course, these culinary
legends were friends, and Jacques recalls a story of going over to James Beard's place and was served these onion sandwiches. And he recalls them being round. On the James Beard website, they recommend brioche, which
is an enriched French bread, and they recommend the bun shape so you get the nice round shape, and then just cutting
the tops and bottoms. Jacques shares in his version just using white sandwich bread and cutting them with a cookie cutter. So let's try both. First, this is just thin
white sandwich bread, and we'll cut them into circles. And if you don't have a cookie cutter, just use a big, like,
pint glass or something. Ta-da! Cute, right? It looks like an Uncrustable. An unfilled Uncrustable. (gasps) Have you seen
the deep-fried version of the Uncrustable? I'm tempted to try that. I'm not a huge fan of
peanut butter and jelly -- I know, sacrilegious, I can count how many times I've had, I think I've only had
it a handful of times. But Uncrustables, for those
of you that don't know, are sold in US. They are frozen little pockets like this of white bread that have peanut butter and jelly sandwiched together, seamed like a little pie. So, kids that don't let crust
will eat the entire thing, that is the theory, because there's no crust. But then I've seen videos
where people deep fry them and then they become
fried little hand pies. Genius. Might have to try that. Let me know in the comments. (laughs) And now we have the brioche version, which is almost the same
exact size in diameter. Ga, ga, ga! Just so that it is a little bit flatter. And Jacques, of course, would recommend saving
these crusts of bread in a bag in the freezer and then making breadcrumbs out of them, which I think is a great idea. Ta-da! So that's the brioche version. Now, if you compare the
brioche to the sandwich bread, they are different colors
because brioche contains eggs, so you get that nice yellow color. We're gonna need some onion. I'm choosing to use a Vidalia onion, which is a sweet variety of onion. So what you do is just
trim off this top bit, cut it in half this way. So I'm gonna set that aside. A quarter-moon. And then we're going to
slice quarter of an inch, relatively thin. So I'm gonna cut a few
for our sandwiches here. Why is it sticking to my knife? I don't like that. And then I'm gonna also chop
up some Italian parsley. This is growing very prolifically and well in my garden right now. Very happy about that. Finally, chop this because
we want it to grace the edge of our sandwich, so you want it to be nice and small. Chopped parsley. We're gonna take some mayonnaise. I'm using Hellmann's, as
it's known on the East Coast. It's known as Best
Foods on the West Coast. Like this, I also like
Kewpie mayo very much. Down South, y'all probably have Duke's. Add a generous amount of mayo. For those of you that
don't like mayo, look away. Oh, it's so good on a
BLT, on a tomato sandwich. Essential. I love dipping a knife
into a new jar of mayo. It's so nice. Now, here's where our onion
technique comes into play. Because we did half-rounds, we can adjust for the size of our bread. Just put half this way like that. Another half this way. So then it makes for the
perfectly-sized onion. Isn't that brilliant? And then put this on
top of here like that. Using more mayonnaise
to get the edges here. This is gonna be our spackle, our glue, and we roll the sandwich
in the parsley like this. Look at that! Look how fancy. Alrighty, so let's give our beautiful onion sandwich a taste. There it is. To James and Jacques, itadakimasu. Mmm. That is a delectable sandwich. Mmm! So good. In my opinion, the mayo is essential. It adds a lovely richness, saltiness, and a nice little counterpoint to the really great vegetal
crunch of the onion. The onion's a little bit sweet, it's a bit sulfurous, full of great raw oniony flavor. I am a huge fan of raw onions, always get them on my hot dog. Love, love, love it. It's great! And then you've got the
parsley that surrounds it. Not only does that add a
big, bright flash of color, it makes it feel elegant, but it adds a lovely flavor as well. Green and bright, and it goes really, really well with the salty mayo and the onion. It's just so simple and delicious. The brioche is lovely,
it's a little bit rich, but it's soft and plush and goes really well with
that big crunch of the onion. So great and simple! You have to try it. If you like onions, try this. So, so very good. And easy. Great! I have onions coming out of
my garden very, very soon and I think this would be perfect. Like, garden-grown, fresh summery onions, bread, parsley, I want some tomato too, fabulous. So that was James Beard's
beautiful, simple onion sandwich. And now I'm gonna make yet
another simple sandwich and this one comes from Jacques. And this is a very French and very simple, and it is the radish sandwich. We only need radishes, bread, and butter. Oh, and some parsley or chives to decorate the edge of this as well. Two rounds of bread. And they don't need to be round. You can make it square or
whatever shape you like. And I'm gonna generously butter them with some room temperature salted butter. Jacque actually used unsalted butter and added more salt on top. But I tend to have salted
butter in my house, so that's what I'm using. Got a bowl full of radishes. Aren't they gorgeous? I love growing radishes in my garden. They grow so easily, so quickly, and they're so cheery. So, you can slice these radishes. But what Jacques does in his recipe is he takes a vegetable peeler and get really thin slices like that. Look how perfectly thin that is, right? And then add it to your sandwich. Oh. So nice. So we're gonna make a
little pattern of those all over our sandwich. Nice, good layer. I would say one radish. Oh my gosh, they're so sweet. Radishes are so cute! That white and pink together, so pretty. You can make lots of great garnishes, lots of '70s garnishes. My mom did that once. She had a picture of it. That's the only reason why I know 'cause I was too little to remember. It looked like a croquembouche. It looked like a Christmas tree
made out of radish flowers. A little bit of salt. Look how lovely. Buttery top on top. And then the same, we are going to use softened butter, just like we did with the
mayo in the last sandwich. Roll it in the parsley. Let's give our radish sandwich a taste. Itadakimasu. (chuckles) Hmm! That's delicious. I've never had a radish sandwich before. Lots of butter on really
plush, soft bread, crunch of the radish, and that very, almost horseradish-y, slightly peppery flavor of
the radish and the crunch. And the thin layers are really nice. You get this kind of layered crunch. And it's so stinkin' beautiful with the pink along with
the bright green parsley. It is so attractive and lovely. And oh-so very simple. This is a perfect sandwich for spring when radishes are coming in in full. It's great. Hmm! The bread is slightly sweet. It goes so well with that salt. It reminds me a little bit
of cucumber sandwiches, little finger sandwiches that
you would have at tea time. Fabulous. Both of these I
would definitely make again. Alrighty, my lovelies, there you have it, two very, very simple, humble sandwiches that you can elevate by
cutting the shape of them and then adding a little
bit of parsley to the edge to make them quite seemingly fancy. But, again, so simple and delicious. Many, many foods are so good because they are simply that simple. Alrighty, my lovelies,
thanks so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed that one, I hope you learned something. Please share this video with your friends, follow me on social media, like this video, check out
the Hard Times Playlist where I share other
delicious humble recipes from times of hardship, and I shall see you in the next one. Toodaloo, take care, bye! (soft music) (lighthearted music)
♪ Ba, ba, ba, ba, ba ♪ ♪ Ba, ba, ba, ba, ba ♪ - I feel like I have
parsley all over my teeth. That's okay, I'm cool with
that, I'm okay with that.
