Croque Monsieur?
I've been looking at my cookbooks and on the internet at Croque Monsieur recipes. Some use a bechamel sauce and others don't? What is the authentic method? Does anyone have a recipe that you've tried and loved?
Thanks...
P.S. And for the Croque Madame (with the egg on top) -- is it a fried egg or a poached egg? The really odd thing is that in the Julia & Jacques at home cookbook, they say a croque madame uses chicken instead of ham! No mention of an egg anywhere. Yet all over Paris, the croque madame was just a croque monsieur with an egg. Does anyone know the story here??
wyf4lyf
Jul 09, 2005 09:33PM
Julia and Jacques get to say whatever they want because they're JULIA and JACQUES!
That said, I found one recipe for Croque Madame using chicken instead of ham (other than J&J's recipe), so I guess it's rarely but not never chicken.
BTW, has anybody ever heard of a Toast-tite? It was a gizmo you put on a stove burner to make an enclosed toasted cheese sandwich. My mother had one and used to feed us fab t.c. sands when we were kids. You buttered a slice and stuck it on one side of the cooking circle (round metal at end of long handle), put on cheese and whatever else, topped it with another piece of buttered bread, clamped the thing together and cooked over the open flame of the stove burner. Delicious.
Wonder if they make them anymore? I still have my mother's old one.
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i grew up on those sandwiches. didn't know the name for it, we called it a hobo-sandwich maker. we made grilled cheese, but it was also wonderful filled w/ peanut butter or pizza ingredients. this was a favorite when camping since it closed up nice & tight, you just shoved the business end in the fire pit.
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Yup...we had one in our house, too. My Dad had gotten it before I was born, I think! A precursor to the electric sandwich grills/presses of today.
Now...does anyone have a croque monsieur recipe?? :)
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The Croque-Monsieur, that I remember from my year in Paris, was the plain ham & cheese variety. But, oh what ham, what cheese, the bread & butter were fantastic. The whole was better than the sum of its parts. There was not a drop of Bechamel in sight but that is not to say it wouldn't be a good addition. I used to sneak some mustard on mine from time to time and the world didn't stop. For Sunday suppers we had Croque-Madame, the chicken and cheese type. There was nary an egg in sight, poached or otherwise. With a soft green salad, it made a lovely meal.
Now, to the Toast-Tite. I'd never heard of such a thing until my husband mentioned it as his favorite food memory several years ago. I couldn't find the real (read: round) Toast-Tite maker and substituted a camping sandwich maker from REI. It is a rectangular metal device and also has long handles, for the campfire, I imagine. He's thrilled with the results. BTW: this should only be used on a gas flame cooktop. I don't want to remember the electric burner fiasco the first time I tried this .... suffice it to say that we met some very nice firefighters.
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Oakjoan, hold on to that Toast-tite. We lost ours in a move in the 80's, and I have been looking for one ever since. I actually spied one behind the counter at LuLu's at the SFFB but somebody there had owned it for a long time and didn't know where to get another one. I finally settled on one made for campfires. It has a nonstick coating but it has the same mechanism. That Toast-tite made the very best sandwiches.
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The recipe for the Croque Monsieur served at Tartine Bakery in San Francisco was in Bon Appetit's January 2005 issue. It's not in epicurious.com, but I found this link using Google. This is my favorite (American) Croque Monsieur.
Link: http://www.recipebites.com/swap/roast...
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farmersdaughter:
Since it was on your link right under the croque monsieur and is coincidentally on my weekly list of recipes to try, I thought I'd ask:
Have you tried making that buttermilk lemon cake? If so, how did you like it and what was the center like? Thanks!
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Funny you should ask! I have it on my list to make for my next dinner party but haven't made it yet!
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Like the US "grilled cheese" sandwich, you can end up with a number of variations on what you might think is a strictly defined dish. As much as there can be said to be "one" recipe for a Croque Monsieur, yes, it most commonly has Béchamel or Mornaise on top. But you couldn't say it was "wrong" if it were served plain.
As for the Croque Madame - I have no idea what the true origin is, but between them, I imagine Pépin and Child had a good reason for their statement. Most commonly, though, it's made with ham.
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I like to order croque monsieur when I see it on a menu at a deli (Northeast US), but have never once received it with a sauce, just a egg-dipped ham and cheese sandwich, often served sprinkled with powdered sugar. Sauce sounds good though.
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That sounds like a Monte Cristo, not a croque monsieur.
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Oh, you know why that is? Because I'm an idiot.
Never post quickly while doing actual work at work. No good comes.
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Thomas Keller has an excellent recipe in his new Bouchon cookbook for Croque-Madame, which he claims is a Croque-monsieur with a fried egg and mornay sauce on top - which leads me to believe that he wouldn't put mornay on a croque-monsieur. However, authenticy aside, I always put mornay on my Croque-monsiuer sandwiches because I like it that way and without that it would pretty much be a ham and cheese sandwich. The type of ham makes a difference as well. I purchase a French-style cooked ham at my deli and use gruyere. Keller calls it "boiled ham" and doesn't specify the type of "Swiss cheese". His recipe also calls for Brioche. Let me know if you're interested in Keller's complete recipe.
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Yes! Please post Keller's recipe. I'd love to see it.
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Croque Madame from Thomas Keller's Bouchon
8 1/2 inch slices Brioche (or other egg bread)
8 ounces thinly sliced boiled ham
8 slices 1/2 ounce each, Swiss cheese
3 Tbsp. unsalted butter
4 large eggs
1 cup Mornay sauce (warmed)
Freshly ground black pepper
2 tsp. chopped Italian parsley
Preheat oven to 375 F. Lay out the bread slices. Divide the ham among them, making sure it doesn't extend over the edges of the bread. Place the cheese over the ham. If the cheese is larger than the bread, bend it over to fit.
Heat two large overproof nonstick pans or griddles over medium heat. If you have only one large pan, make 2 sandwiches and keep them warm in the oven while you make the second batch. Add 1 tablespoon butter to each pan. When it has melted, add half the bread cheese side up to each pan and cook for 1 to 2 minutes, or until the bottoms are golden brown. Transfer the pans to the oven for 2 to 3 miutes to melt the cheese.
Meanwhile, melt the remaining 1 tablespoon of butter in a large ovenproof skillet and fry the eggs. Cook the eggs until the bottoms are set, then place the skillet in the oven for a minute to set the top of the whites. We cook the eggs in 4 to 5 inch individual skillets.
When the cheese is melted, remove the sandwiches from the oven. Place 2 slices together to make each sandwich and put each sandwich on a serving plate. Place an egg on top of each sandwich. Pour about 1/2 cup of the sauce over the white of each egg, leaving the yolk uncovered. Grind black pepper over each egg and garnish the eggs with a diagonal sprinkling of parsley. Serve with frites, if desired.
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Thanks so much! It sounds perfect.
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I made this last week, and it was fantastic. I ate it, wrote about it, and then immediately made it again for dinner. Seriously, give it a try.
http://cookingbouchon.blogspot.com
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I made his recipe last weekend and it was awesome. I can't say that I know what's in a "correct" croque m/mme, but I agree that without the sauce, it's just plain old toasted ham & cheese.
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You got me curious so I looked it up in Larousse Gastronomique: "A hot sandwich, made of two slices of buttered bread with the crusts removed, filled with thin slices of Gruyere cheese and a slice of lean ham . . . lightly browned on both sices . . . may be coated with a Gruyere bechamel sauce and cooked au gratin" It also states that the croque-madame has a baked egg on top. I can't think of a better source than that.
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Thanks for that! Sounds like the bechamel is optional, but I'll make mine with it as it's sooo good. Thanks again.
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Bon appetite . . . eat one for me too (with bechamel).
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