Ready Set Go! French week has begun

I took a lot of time trying to decide on what would be the first recipe I would make to kick off my around the world challenge. To make things more difficult its French week, which means I had a million wonderful things I could cook. Me being the indcisive person I am I almost went crazy trying to pick a recipe.
Monday morning came and I still hadn't decided what I was going to cook. Then it hit me I had a small Julia Childs book (In Julia's kitchen) so I said why not start there she will have something it is Julia Childs after all. I am so glad I found that little book given to me a long time ago. Because after only few minutes of searching I found it! The recipe the recipe that would kick off this cooking challenge and get the ball rolling on french week.
My very first french dish of the week is drum roll please, French Onion Soup!  I was shocked I hadn't thought of it before now. I love french onion soup and always wanted to make it at home. However I never did because I thought you need to have individual oven proof soup crocks. When I read Julia's recipe she uses a large cassarole dish to layer the toast and cheese. I no longer had any excuses it was time to make soup!
Oh before I forget the best part of this recipe is that it has both brandy and wine in it, for me it was already a winner! So let the soup making being.

I knew I would obviously need onions for onion soup but I was shocked that I would need 2 quarts of onions which comes out to eight cups of sliced onions!

Once I finished slicing onions, it was time to melt butter (you can't have french food without butter) in olive oil. My advice is buy the good imported butter it has a richer taste and gives you that frenchy feel!

Once the butter is melted and the pan is hot add all the onions in. A couple of notes this requires a big sauce pan so break out your biggest pot. Another note it takes about 40 minutes for the onions to carmalize and get a nice golden brown. So if your starving or in a hurry to get dinner on the table this is not the meal you want to make.

This is what the onions look like after 40 minutes of cooking and stiring so they don't stick to the bottom of the pan. Half way through the process I added 1/2 teaspoon of salt and sugar and just continued stiring.
While I was waiting for my onions to carmalize I toasted my french bread and sliced my cheese for the cassarole.

Oh yes there is a lot of cheese in this dish yum!!!!!

Finally the onions are brown! Time to add the Brandy(woo hoo) and wine(double woo hoo) and beef broth. You would think 10 more minutes soup is done, you'd be wrong. I had to let this simmer for thirty more minutes. Once the soup has simmered I then got to layer the bread, soup and cheese into my cassarole dish and put in the oven.
(sorry I didn't photograph this step because by this time I had been working on this soup for almost two hours and I was starving so we are just going to skip ahead to the final product)
After 30 more minutes in the oven this is what I got!

I will say this soup was well worth the time and the effort! With all that warm bubbly cheese and reach onion soup I was in french heaven! Cory said this was his idea of comfort food! He ate so much he made himself sick! I will definitely make this again on a cold rainy day or a lazy sunday afternoon. So there it is dish one of week one. two more french dishes to go this week and 10 more weeks to go after. I am not going to get ahead of myself I am taking it one day at a time. I should go and run off some of that butter, cheese and bread I ate. Who are we kidding I am going to watch the RHOBH instead. :)