Grown Up Tuna Melt

Caramelized onions are very French and French is very sophisticated.  Hence, adding caramelized onions to just about any dish will make it more sophisticated.  I decided to try out this theory with a recipe I found on A Cozy Kitchen.  The onions take the most time so I stuck them in a pan with olive oil so they could get nice and brown while I made basic tuna fish (just tuna and mayo for me - I like to keep it simple).  The onions went on a piece of rosemary olive oil bread (sourdough would be great, too), held in place by the tuna, then topped with shredded cheese.  I was going to go with gouda, but then I found champagne cheddar by Yancey's Fancy.  If you saw cheese that was infused with champagne, you would get it, too.  Usually you have wine with cheese so combining the two in one block of white cheddar makes perfect sense.  It was the perfect compliment to the sweet onions.  I put the whole thing on a foil lined baking sheet that went underneath the broiler.

Once it was nice and melty I took it out and topped it with the final ingredient: a few salt and vinegar chips.  The chips sound a little weird, I know.  But it was in the original recipe so I was worried it wouldn't qualify as "grown up" without them.  No one should accuse me of being a Peter Pan (even though I was Tiger Lily in our middle school musical - a story for another day) so I left the chips in the dish.  I'm glad I did because those chips gave it quite a zing!  Salt and vinegar chips are a little much for me on their own.  I find the flavor a bit too intense.  First of all, you need a crunch because tuna and caramelized onions are both soft.  But I didn't only think they "worked" on this sandwich, I thought they were great and began piling more on with each bite.  It's hard to explain how it works, but I am now a believer.