2 Sandwich Classics, Iron Chef Style

I'm gonna make two classic sandwiches, Iron Chef style. Let's go. This peanut butter and jelly sandwich will change your life, I guarantee it, look at it. All right, how does an Iron Chef make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich at home? Super easy, super fun. So I know I said I was making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, why am I starting with eggs? Three eggs, half a cup of milk. Whisk that together, a little bit of butter in a nice big skillet. Classic thick white sandwich bread. So I'm just soaking the white bread in the egg and milk mix, browning a little butter in a hot skillet. And that's part of the secret, right? Let your butter get a little bit brown like that and then drop those pieces of toast right in there. I didn't put any sugar on the French toast because I kinda wanna keep the sweetness for the peanut butter and jelly part. Otherwise I might have added a little sugar, right? And then brown them on that first side, takes a minute or two. Normally you make French toast, you take it out of the pan, you douse it in syrup, fruit, whatever, and you eat it right away. I actually start my peanut butter and jelly sandwich by making the French toast and letting it cool and get a little crispy and firmed up because it's gonna turn into a sandwich, right? All right, jam, strawberry jam. It's called peanut butter and jelly but this is a big controversy. Do you eat your peanut butter sandwich with grape jelly or with strawberry jam? And don't lie, cause I'll know. Jelly is fruit juice, jam is fruit. So what do you want? You want fruit or do you want fruit juice? Well, I want fruit. So I'm gonna add some cut up strawberries to this caramelized honey. Now careful cause the honey's hot. So drop the strawberries in away from you. Tiny pinch of salt. I know you're thinking, did you just add salt to strawberries? Just a pinch with that honey. And then the other surprising little thing is a half a teaspoon of red wine vinegar. With that sweet honey, we've got pinch of that salt making it savory and a little bit of brightness from the vinegar and no one's gonna know. That's an ICAG trick. Now look at this cooking in the pan. You'll see after you have these on the stove for a couple minutes, all that honey, look at that liquid. That's just the strawberry jam and the honey. Two ingredients. You could caramelize bananas like this in honey. Put it on there. I'm gonna take roasted peanuts, about three cups and I'm gonna puree it up and make homemade peanut butter. Now look, I add a pinch of salt. Even if they're roasted, add a tiny pinch. And then we're gonna see how it goes. All right, we gotta assess. All right, pulsing. Put it on first. Make sure it's plugged in. Woo, wake up. Jam's cooking. Peanut butter's making. French toast. Do we see this sandwich coming together? I don't know about you, but if you walked in my kitchen, would you not say, obviously, you're making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? Now these strawberries, oh my God, look at them. Look at this liquid. All we put in here was strawberries and some honey. Why'd you use vinegar and not like a lemon? I'm not gonna add a whole lemon to this, right? I'm gonna add like a squeeze of lemon if I use lemon. I don't wanna cut up a whole lemon for that. The vinegar is actually brighter, more vibrant. Also, I don't want lemon on my peanut butter. I just want acidity. All right, we're still pulsing. You see, it's getting kind of powdered. I'm gonna add two tablespoons of olive oil. You could add peanut oil if you want. And two tablespoons of honey, which we already have in the jar. And we're gonna finish now that it's broken up. If you're not an chef, you're making peanut butter and jelly to save time. All right, there's our jam. And it's just a natural pectin in the fruit mixed with the honey. Look at how thick and syrupy the liquid is inside. That's just the pectin, the natural pectin of the fruit coming up. I'm gonna add a little water now, quarter cup water. You add this in stages once the peanut butter's broken up. And at the last stage, shake a little bit. Peanut butter. Wow. Look at this jam already. Now it needs to cool a little bit, but that's fine. I need a minute anyway. And when you take it out, you can just mash them down a little bit with the back of a spoon if you like less texture. And then we have our peanut butter. So the French toast has cooled a little bit. Instead of sandwich bread, we make French toast. Instead of peanut butter from a jar, we make from scratch. You can do any part of this, or you can buy peanut butter, buy jelly, make the French, buy jam and make the French toast and just do this. All right, bread, aka French toast. Peanut butter, aka homemade by the ICAG that you can make. Peanut butter with the back of a spoon. There's a lot of ways people make peanut butter sandwiches. I know. I see you out there. But this is so peanutty with the roasted peanuts and that little bit of salt. So this is how I build my sandwich. One side is peanut butter. The other side is this wild jam. And we just nibble it out. Oh yeah. Tiny bit of peanut, tiny bit of salt. If you want, if you want to be like extra, you can put the tiniest bit of cinnamon. You're never gonna do the same. Are you ready to have your life changed? Gently saw, okay? Gentle. Now, the taste. It's hard to tell yourself you're awesome when you made something. I can just tell you this is awesome and you should make it. The peanut butter, so peanut buttery. Strawberries with the honey. The French toast, so extra with the bread. This is divine. I'm pretty good looking too. So a crouponade is a bechamel sauce, fancy name for a cream sauce, mixed with lots of Gruyere cheese, grated, sandwiched in between two pieces of bread with ham, browned in a pan, and then we put a little bit more of that on top, pop it in the oven so it gets all like gooey on top, and then we eat it. And in the case of a crouponade, we put an egg on top. So I'm gonna start by making an easy cheesy sauce. This is a mornay, which sounds super fancy, but when I tell you what's in it, you're gonna be like, that's not so fancy. I've got all that. Two tablespoons of butter, two tablespoons of flour, generous pinch of salt, pinch of cracked pepper, and just cook that down nice and easy. By the way, that smells so good. Now, we don't wanna brown this. Just wanna cook the flour a little bit. Pepper, salt, flour, butter. Starts to bubble, doesn't get browned or anything. I'm gonna add half a cup of milk. Little flour and butter cook together for a minute, and then we simmer it with milk. You see how instantly the milk, the flour, the butter all come together and thicken? Guess what we're gonna add? Cheese. Half a cup of grated Gruyere. And if it gets a little thick on you, add a splash more milk, just enough to bring it all together and let the cheese get all melty and gooey. Look at that. This is a classic croque monsieur, like the goo for a croque monsieur or madame. We stop here. I like to add just a sprinkle of grated parm or pecorino, two tablespoons. Just give it like the extra cheesy goo. We build our sandwich. I'm gonna take, fold it up in the bread. Two pieces is good, which means three pieces. Three pieces ham, and I kinda like that the ham's like peeking out a little bit on the edges of your bread. This is a sandwich that's about building it the right way. Gooey cheese sauce. Okay. This is about to be an honest sandwich. Oh, yeah. Don't put too much. Gooey cheese sauce. Gooey cheese sauce on the bread. A little more cheese. And then we close. Now, you can make these in advance. Assemble them and have them cold in the fridge. Cast iron skillet, couple tablespoons of olive oil. We'll get that nice and hot. Goo holding it together, hot pan. All right, this is a two-part sandwich, meaning I start in a cast iron, get it all browned on the outside, then we get it warm and toasty in the oven with more cheese. So once that first side is browned, flip it. Yeah, we need more cheese. Cheese. What? This is how you do it. In the oven. All right, while that's cooking in the oven, let's fry an egg. This is gonna be a sunny-side up egg. And it got a couple minutes, so you can fry it kind of nice and easy. A little salt and pepper on there. Oh, my God. Holy. I mean, it's like messy in the best way. Look at that. See that little cheese? She looks good. Now, I cut it in half, right? You can cut it in half, put it together. You want to have a madame, like you want to madame it up in your life. Put that sandwich on a plate and drop an egg right on top. All right, so I put the egg on top after I cut the sandwich in half, because you do this. Cut that egg in half, and then you break it open. It's like a date night. This is like, you want to get married after the first date. You have kids in nine months and one day after you make this sandwich. All right, I'm doing it. Do it for all of us. Oh, my God. The fried egg. I forgot how good a croque madame is. How much better the ladies are than the dudes. You know what I'm saying? I don't remember which one. I like better, honestly. I came in like, all right, I'm team, you know, croque madame. I'm going to like that better than the peanut butter. Make them both, eat them both. They're so worth it, and they're easy. You can do this. You've made a fried egg. Just put a sandwich underneath it.