What’s cooking at present: Croque Monsieur

The well-known Parisian road meals is not only a ham and cheese sandwich. Who fries a sandwich? Sure, they’re fried. After which grilled.

This recipe accompanies this story

Components

(For two)

4 slices plain white bread

Butter (for the surface)

3 Tbsp extra butter for frying

Dijon mustard

2 or 3 slices of Emmental or Gruyère cheese per croque (so that you want 4 to six for the two)

2 or 3 slices of respectable high quality ham per croque (so 4 to six in all)

1 amount béchamel sauce for which you want:

2 heaped Tbsp flour

2 beneficiant Tbsp butter

500 ml milk

Methodology

Warmth the milk however don’t boil. Soften butter in a saucepan on a low warmth. Take away and vigorously stir within the flour to make a clean roux. Put pot on a low warmth and pour in half the milk, whisking till it thickens. Add remaining milk and whisk till it thickens once more. Season with a little bit salt and a grating of nutmeg. Maintain apart until wanted.

To assemble:

Activate the oven grill (that’s, the kind that heats from above) to get actually sizzling earlier than it’s good to grill them.

Don’t butter the within of the bread.

Do butter the surface.

Lay a slice of bread down, buttered facet beneath. Smear it with Dijon mustard, as a lot as you want i.e. to style. Spoon la béchamel on the mustard-smeared bread. Lay the ham on la béchamel. Lay the cheese slices or grated cheese on the ham. Put the bread on prime of the cheese. 

Don’t add extra on prime at this stage since you first must fry them.

Soften butter in a pan. Fry the croques on one facet till golden brown. Flip fastidiously and fry the opposite facet until golden brown. Place on an oven pan, or a rack over a pan, within the right order (you flipped them whereas frying, so flip them again) and spoon extra béchamel onto the buttered prime of the higher slice of bread, the thought being that the bread will take up the sauce. Prime with extra cheese slices (or grated in case you are extra of a conformist than I).

Now pop it underneath the grill for the cheese on prime to soften into the béchamel which in flip oozes into the bread and every part turns into essentially the most fascinating sandwich on this planet. Et voila! DM/TGIFood

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