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thevintagebluebird · 6 years

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Unpinned - Croque Monsieur

Thought you could get rid of me that easily!? Hello all - yes, it’s been a while. These past few months I’ve been running around New England as my favorite people in the world get married, buy houses, and have babies. Celebrating life milestones with my loved ones has been wonderful, and I’m so grateful to all of them for sharing those special moments with me. And now that all the excitement has died down, I’m settled back at home to celebrate the truly big things in my own life: rewatching Star Trek: The Next Generation, fixing the scratching post my cat destroyed, and successfully making a grilled cheese with ham.

Also I’ve been spending a lot of money on wine lately. Can’t find any correlation. Hmm.

Anyhoo, Allan and I had the distinct honor of hosting one of our favorite people Zach for dinner the other night, and this mad lad was inspired to teach us FRENCH COOKING. Seriously, if you’re not friends with this guy you’re missing out - funny, nice as heck, and a master chef. He’ll even bring you laundry detergent if you ask nicely! Zach took our lumpy, lifeless forms and turned them into PASSABLE SOUS CHEFS! Meaning we didn’t burn down the kitchen. Join us as we are taught how to make the New York Times’ Croque Monsieur!

Verdict: Is the Pintrest photo complete bullshit? - We did not have fresh-baked, hand-sliced country white bread, but other than that it’s not totally fake!

Is it crazy expensive/time consuming/confusing? - Stocking up on cheese was probably an expense, but since Zach did the shopping I have a nice buffer and can pretend it was FREE!

Does it taste good? - I’m sorry, have you ever met a dish made entirely of melted cheese that WASN’T good? ‘Cause I haven’t.

Croque-Monsieur

Makes 2 sandwiches (we doubled it for four)

Time: 20 minutes (eehhhhhhh)

INGREDIENTS

5 tablespoons butter

1 tablespoon flour

⅔ cup milk

Sea salt

Freshly grated nutmeg

4 1/3-inch-thick slices country bread (not sourdough or whole wheat)

4 thin slices French ham

2 thin slices Gruyere cheese

DIRECTIONS

Preheat a two-sided electric griddle on medium-high to high for about 20 minutes, or preheat the oven to 300 degrees and preheat a cast-iron skillet on top of the stove for about 5 minutes. Prepare a bechamel sauce: in a small saucepan over medium heat, melt 1 tablespoon butter. When bubbles have subsided, add flour and whisk vigorously for 1 minute. Slowly whisk in milk until smooth. Bring to a boil, and cook until thick. Remove from heat, and season to taste with salt and nutmeg.

Spread two slices of bread generously with sauce. Lay two slices of ham on top of each, and top each with a slice of cheese; ham and cheese should slightly overlap edges of bread. Top each with a slice of bread.

In a small saucepan, melt remaining the 4 tablespoons butter. Brush the sandwiches on both sides with butter, making sure that the edges are well covered. If you're using a griddle, place cheese side down, close the griddle and cook until the bread is toasted dark and cheese is leaking out and bubbling. If you're using a skillet, place sandwiches cheese side down and cook on stove top until well browned, then turn and brown again. Transfer skillet to oven, and bake until heated through and cheese is bubbling. Serve hot.

A motley crew, to be sure. Allan and I had just rushed to run home and jumped in and out of the shower, hence why we look like drowned rats. Zach looks lovely. I can’t really comment about the state of the New York Times cooking website because honestly, Zach brought it and I didn’t find it wandering among the shiny editorial photos of Pintrest. Plus they’re a really good resource for recipes (my favorite salad dressing is from a NYT recipe). So just trust they’re cool.

This is sorta vaguely what you’ll need. We’ve also got cooking drinks and snacks mixed in there too. And dish soap. Don’t cook with that.

Here’s Zach, casting a spell over his phone to ensure the success of our undertaking. Spoiler alert: it worked!

Mandatory cooking wine. Angry Bunch is my current favorite (aka the Hapke/Knowles house wine) and if anyone from Angry Bunch wants to send me a free bottle for the shameless plug, just send it to Somerville. Doesn’t matter where. I’ll find it.

Ok, so you get your bowl of ice water out. This made me nervous, because it was starting to seem like this was going to be really complicated like making a pie crust from scratch, but it turns out it was just for de-starching the potatoes. Oh, did I mention we were making our own french fries? ‘Cause HECK YEAH folks, we were also HAND-MAKING FRIES!

Turn yo potatoes into fries! Cold, wet fries!

Zach checking the recipe while poor Allan is (once again) put on potato peeling duty. What can I say, kid has skills. Also I realize that at this point I’ve told you nothing about making a croque monsieur. Patience, dear reader.

To make a croque monsieur you’re gonna need an amazing cheese sauce to pour over your actual slices of cheese. It’s a modified roux. And being a Rew, it was only fitting that I had roux-making duty (with the watchful eye and helpful directions of our fearless leader Zach). Here I am attempting to grate just enough cheese to make the sauce. We found out shortly later that ‘just enough’ cheese was actually all the cheese he brought.

Had to leave enough Gruyere to slice, ‘cause no one wants a grilled cheese made of only cheese sauce. You need cheese melt AND sauce. Obviously.

Teamwork makes the dream work! Zach gently adding flour while I stir WITHOUT STOPPING to make a damn fine roux. My grandma would be proud. She re-teaches me this every single year at Thanksgiving when we make gravy. Also note the banana cream pie in the top right because Zach is a super guest and not only brings all the ingredients and know-how to a dinner party but he even brings *desert*. Damn.

Allan on ham duty! We were running out of counter space, hence the sink-shot.

A PERFECT CHEESY ROUX! If you dip your spoon in and it comes out drippy but coated, you know you’ve hit that sweet spot.

Take your hand-me-down lobster pot (that you usually only use to cold-brew coffee) and actually use it to cook things! Here I discover that every attempt I’ve ever made to deep fry has resulted in hot-grease arms/hands/walls because I wasn’t using a deep enough pot. Look at me now!!

We’ve got ham, cheese, cheese sauce, and more cheese. It’s...beautiful. And ready to go in the oven!

Pomme frites!

As you can see we didn’t quite get that orange glow on top of ours like the NYT photo, but they still look DAMN fine to me.

All three of us are former restaurant employees. As such, plating is very important. Notice we even made the effort to pretend this isn’t just a cheese-stuffed 10,000 calorie cheat meal. ‘Cause it has a salad. Healthy!

Aaaaaaand the reaction? Thumbs up!!

Final final verdict: Fucking. Delicious. Make this as the ultimate comfort food dinner, and follow it up with banana cream pie. EPIC. Thank you Zach!!

#cooking #unpinned #pinterest #recipe #pintrestfail

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