The Croque-Madame

I had heard of the croque-monsieur sandwich often in the past year or so.. apparently it's making the rounds in the foodie-blog world, since that's where I discover many foods I'd never heard of before. It sounded intriguing, something I might want to try one day, but nothing to add to the MUST MAKE list. I mean seriously, it's a grilled ham & cheese sammie. No big whoop. And then I was going through some magazine last week - for the life of me I can't remember what it was called - and saw this photo of the most awesome looking sandwich I'd ever seen. It had a fried egg on top! I don't think I've ever spoke of my obsession? fascination? complete and utter GLEE when it comes to the fried egg, specifically the yolk. But there's a twist. Yes, I love fried eggs for breakfast (or dinner) with the usual accoutrements - buttered toast, sausage or bacon, hashbrowns, you know.. heart attack on a plate? :) But this obsession - fascination - complete and utter glee that I feel when I see something topped with a friend egg, that normally wouldn't be topped with an egg.. I just.. can't find the words without sounding gross. Salivate upon seeing oozing yolk is what it is, but frankly, I just grossed myself out by saying that. Salivate and oozing really shouldn't be in the same sentence. Hopefully you yolk lovers out there will get where I'm coming from.. if not.. maybe try to block out what you've just read by closing your eyes tightly and singing LA LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU MISS GROSS-Y MCGROSSTER extremely loudly until the images go away. :P It was the mental vision of a crispy baked sammie loaded with cheese and that broken yolk oozing (I can't stop with the fakkin oozing! Someone give me a better word for crissakes - and don't say "runny" cuz that squicks me out too!) down the side of it that had me in such a tizz.. hell it could have been a rabbit turd & peat moss sandwich and I would have been drooling all because of that egg. I once saw a salad made of greens, roasted sweet potato chunks and a big old fried egg on top and although I haven't made it YET, I still drool over the thought of it. A salad with roasted chunks of sweet potato for crissakes? All because of that ooz glorious fried egg. Anyhoo... As I read the intro to the recipe and realized it was a croque-monsieur with a fried egg thrown on top, the sandwich jettisoned to the MUST MAKE list tout de suite. So I ripped the pages out, brought it home to show hubbs and he agreed, we needed to have this for dinner ASAP. Basically, if ya'll haven't heard of the croque-monsieur, it's ham & cheese (usually gruyère or emmental) between two slices of bread that have been slathered with a bechamel sauce, and then more cheese on top. It's baked until the edges are lightly browned and the cheese is melty and bubbly. Once it comes out of the oven, you slap a fried egg on top to create the croque-madame, throw a nice salad next to it and call it heaven on a plate. I made a few changes to the recipe. I couldn't find the jambon de Paris ham it called for, so I used prosciutto. I'm not a big bechamel sauce by itself kinda gal, so I decided to doctor it up by tossing in a couple generous handfuls of gruyère (I still had quite a bit left over from the bread) and just the barest peench of ground mustard. I used a loaf of French miche, which I bought at Panera - miche, I assume, means fakking huge. It's a very large square loaf of French bread just perfect for grilling, baking, toasting and of course, making a croque-madame. :) Hubbs made a cucumber, tomato, olive & red onion salad in balsamic vinaigrette to go with and I think that's really a must. At least for us.. this sammie is rich, kids. It definitely needs a salad or other light side with it. I had considered frying potatoes & onions, making our dinner more breakfast-like, but am glad that I didn't. So who doesn't like a ham & cheese sammie, eh? I like them, they are O.K., not my favorite but I've eaten many in my day. Who hasn't? Feel about the same way? Kinda meh? Yeah well.. make this kicked up hot ham & cheese sandwich and I doubt you'll ever go back to the usual. We were both amazed at how good this was. Admittedly, the prosciutto wasn't the right ham. It was too salty, but that still didn't take away much from the sandwich in whole. And it was fun to eat a "gourmet" hot ham & cheese with a fork & knife! I suppose you could pick it up and eat it as you would any other sammie, but it'd be kinda messy.. but hey, if that's your thing, go for it. ;) I urge you all to go out and buy a good ham that's not too salty, a big chunk of gruyère or emmental (I'm sure Swiss would be just fine) and a dozen eggs and get to making this for your dinner this week - and then throw it into your rotation every once in a while. It's a bit of a splurge both in price and calories, but you won't be sorry after you take that first bite. Trust me. SO. FAKKIN. GOOD. Croque Monsieur or Madame Serves 4 For Bechamel sauce: 3 TBS. butter 1/4 c. all-purpose flour 3 c. whole milk (I used fat-free and it came out just fine) Pinch of freshly grated nutmeg Salt & white ground pepper to taste For the sandwiches: 8 slices high-quality bread. (the recipe called for "Pullman" loaf, I used French) sliced 1/3 to 1/2 inch thick. 12 oz. thinly sliced jambon de Paris (high quality wet-cured ham, not too salty) 10 oz. Gruyère cheese, coarsely grated 4 whole eggs (for the madame) Over low heat, in a small saucepan, melt butter then whisk in flour until blended. Continue to whisk while pouring in milk to avoid lumps. Continue to cook, stirring constantly until thickened. This should take about 10 minutes. (If you are only making enough for 2 the sauce thickened within 2 minutes) Once thickened, season with nutmeg, salt & pepper. (This is where I added a couple handfuls of grated gruyère and the smallest pinch of ground mustard) Take off heat, set aside. The recipe says you can make the bechamel sauce up to 24 hours early. Place plastic wrap directly on the sauce so it won't form a skin, then refrigerate. Gently reheat a few minutes before you are going to use it. Preheat the oven to 400º F. Place the 8 slices of bread in a single layer on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper. Spread the bechamel sauce evenly to the edges of all the slices (you may not need all of the bechamel). Divide ham between only 4 slices covered with bechamel, keeping the ham within 1/4 inch of the edges. Top all 8 slices with equal amounts of grated gruyère cheese, again spreading it evenly within 1/4 inch of the edges. Place the 4 slices with bechamel and cheese (cheese side up!) on top of the slices layered with ham. Bake until cheese topping is melted and golden brown about 10 to 15 minutes (it took about 20 minutes in my oven) To make the croque-madame, fry 4 eggs sunny-side up (I went with over easy, because egg slime is A VERY BAD THING) and place one on top of each sandwich. Sprinkle with salt & pepper and serve immediately. xoxo

I'm Showing You My Sarnie!

Does that sound dirty? Anyway.. a new friend of mine who is also a new Daring Baker member is hosting her very first foodie event! Marie of A Year at Oak Cottage is in need of laying her eyes on some sammiches! Well, being a sammie lover from way back - and because I recently drooled all over Kelly's Panini - Sorry Kel, here's a roll of paper towels. ;) I decided that I needed to make a chicken panini and I needed to blog about it for Marie's event! Although she might not be the prettiest Panini to look at (I'm highly disappointed in my The Griddler - it does not evenly smoosh the sandwich!), she was quite delish! I didn't have heirloom tomatoes or pesto in the house, so I had to make due with what I had - Grilled Chicken and Salami with Sun-dried Tomato & Roasted Garlic Mayo. As you can see, I also added sweet onion and Fontina cheese - it's the melty-est! Both Hubbs and I enjoyed this very much with a side salad.. although freshly made onion rings would have been delightful as well. ;) There really is no recipe - other than the Mayo (always Hellmanns - never that squicky sweet Miracle Whip crap), which I just added chopped Sun-dried tomatoes, minced roasted garlic and a lil fresh chopped basil to. Easy, eh? Ohh I forgot to add one very important step - I marinated the chicken breasts for 4 hours in Wishbone Robusto Italian Dressing - it really makes a difference! Okay so are you going to show us your sarnie? I think you should! Thanks for hosting a great event, Marie!! xoxo

A Good Example of Why a Knock-off is a Knock-off

My friend, Sara, of i like to cook recently posted a fun week of sandwiches. I tend to overlook sandwiches in favor of something more complicated. I know! What the hell is wrong with me? Well after reading 7 days worth of delicious and unique sammies on her blog, I got myself a cravin'.. a bad, bad craving. A "so not on your diet you hog!" kinda sammich. I tried to not give in, but well.. I haven't had chocolate in 4 fakkin' days!! That's FOUR DAYS WITHOUT MY LIFE SOURCE people! Okay well, I guess I just lied again. I did enjoy a handful of mini chocolate flavored rice cakes the other day. And by enjoy I mean, blech ewww puke buickkkkkkk. My craving was for a delicious Monte Cristo. (I know, could I have picked a worse sammich? I think not.) I had my choice of two recipes. A knock off of Bennigan's Monte Cristo, which I've had and enjoyed quite a bit. Theirs was crispedy, crunchedy and light and airy.. yes, although it is a DEEP FRIED sandwich, theirs was not heavy. My other choice was a Monte Cristo with a lighter batter and baked, not deep fried. This one was much lower on fat (really, Lis? I never would have guessed.) and had mustard on it. It got rave reviews.. the kind that mostly said, "I've ate a 100 deep fried Monte Cristo sammies and your version is not only healthy but tastes equisite!" So which one did I go for? tick tock tick tock For those of you who guessed the baked one.. you obviously haven't been reading my blog for very long. :P OF COURSE I went for the deep fried version.. Paula Deen IS my idol after all! Hello? Have ya'll been drinking? And so I began to make the batter and as I was mixing in the huge amount of flour to the lesser amount of liquid, I thought something might be awry.. this was a very thick batter and dipping my triple decker whole wheat, roasted chicken (went with real chicken as opposed to buying pieces/parts deli turkey slices), bavarian ham, swiss & american cheesed sammich was not easy. You know how you are walking on wet ground and you accidentally step in a mud hole? First you are sqicked, but you keep going only to realize that your next step is shoeless? Because the mud sucked your shoe right off your left foot? Yeah well my poor sammich kept getting it's chicken sucked out from the bread because this stuff was so damn thick. But I persevered.. you know me.. where a normal person would thin out that batter before going on, not I. No sir. I'm bound and determined to get my sammich dipped without losing any more scrumptious chicken breast by trying a different technique - you know a different wrist bend angle? To try to "slide" the sammich in under the goop and then twist the wrist to outsmart the goo by giving it a fake left and then rushing the right? I had a lot of chicken breast to pick outta the batter. < After getting my sammich all battered up I gently layed it in the deep fryer and right before my eyes I watched my whole wheat bread absorb that oil. Mmm mmm good. I figured if I just let it set in there for a while, the sandwich would eventually repel all that oil. That the thick coating of protective goo would shield my sammich from the bad juju of the hot oil. While taking it out of the oil and letting the excess grease drain, I realized that my sammich had gained about 50 pounds. That sucker got heavy! I laid it on some paper towels to absorb the excess oil (PLEASE DON'T TELL ALTON) and carried on making a second sammich for Hubbs. Once both were done, we sat down to watch Ugly Betty and enjoy our restaurant knock-off Monte Cristo sammiches. I made it to about 1/2 of a 1/2 of the sammich. He made it to a little over half before we just dropped them back down on the plate and sat there feeling as if someone had poured cement down our gullets while we weren't looking. God. Why am I posting such a crappy sammich? Well.. I'm thinking that this could have potential. Maybe using canola oil for the frying wasn't the right kind of oil? Maybe if the batter is thinned out it'd take less time to get to it's golden brown deliciousness and therefore wouldn't be as heavy, but more like the crispedy, crunchedy light and airy version that Bennigan's serves. But maybe, this post will jar your memory about how good a Monte Cristo can be and you'll all go search out the baked version and try that one instead. ;) I'm not even going to post this recipe.. if you are adventurous and want to try to make it the traditional way, then check it out here I hope everyone enjoy's their weekend! We've got a brand new group of Daring Bakers for May and I'll have their links up this weekend, so be prepared to go check out some amazing blogs! xoxo Salads.. I'm so about the salads for the rest of the week/weekend!

Cookbook Spotlight: Ships of the Great Lakes Cookbook

Oh jeez, it's been two months now (time flies!) since I saw Mary's post about these yummy looking Walnut Bars.. and yeah they really did look that good, because I can't stand walnuts but the picture had me drooling =) As I read the post, I was so intrigued by the book that the recipe came from - it was a gift to her from her parents and it contained information and recipes from the stewards (the ship's cook) on the big freighter ships that travel on the Great Lakes. I was so intrigued by the book, mainly I think, because these huge ships have been part of my life for, well, all of my life. I've lived no further than 2 miles (currently less than 1/2 mile) from Lake Erie my whole life, so these ships are a common occurrence in my neck of the woods. So common, in fact, that they become part of the background. I don't even really notice them all the time when I'm looking out on the lake.. just like someone who lives near a busy street or near a railroad crossing, sooner than you realize, you just block out the noise and you forget it's there. Well thanks to my new friend, Mary, I started thinking about all of those ships and the people who live/work on them. And the more I got to thinking the more curious I was about what they ate. I left her a comment on that post and that was the beginning of many conversations between us. As it happened, Mary and sweet Sara were in touch with the publishers of Ships of the Great Lakes Cookbook with the idea of this book being the next Cookbook Spotlight. I received an e-mail from Mary asking if I'd be interested on reviewing the book.. oh hell yes, I'd be interested! I was tickled she asked me and just as excited to read the book. A few weeks later a package arrived containing the book and a very cool nautical themed book mark! Maritime Book Threads to be exact - check them out, they are very cool (I got the anchor thread and it rocks) Okay so a cool cook book and some cool book bling - what's not to like about this deal, eh? =) I think my first perusal of the book was more concentrated on the ship's stories and background info - also to see if there were any mentioned from Northeast Ohio (there was).. I really couldn't take a detailed look at it because I had a certain fisherman type person nagging me the whole time, "I wanna see!" "Can I look now?" "C'mon! My turn!!" Ugh. And so, I gave up the book for a few hours. When I finally got it back, I started taking note of some recipes I wanted to try. There are many really good sounding recipes in this book - and most of them are easy to make, down home recipes that you'd expect from this kind of book. Although there is a french pastry recipe tossed in here and there ;) The only one thing that bummed me about this book was that I'd happen upon a recipe that sounded so damn good and I'd get all, "Oh yeah, I'm making this for dinner this week!!" and then it'd be a big let down because the recipe served like 97 people. Hello? I'm pretty confident in my skills to cut a recipe in half.. even thirds.. but from 97 to uhhmm maybe 4? Yeah, that's a lil too much friction for my wee brain cells, if yanno what I mean? And that really is my only bitch about the book. The lay out is nice and it's the kind of cookbook that doesn't bother me with it's lack of pictures. I like how so many freighters, Coast Guard vessels, tall ships, passenger vessels and the old retired ships - some of which have been turned into museums - have been highlighted. Not only is there a picture of the ship, but information on what it carried, how large it was, who the key personnel were and actual menu's are printed too. There is just so much more to this cook book than recipes. I would recommend this book to just about anyone - I can't imagine someone not being able to find a few good recipes as well as not learning anything from the book's stories. Now as for the recipes I made.. well, not to keep using this as an excuse, but it seemed that during the time from my mom's fall, through all of her follow up doctor appointments and just generally caring for her, my opportunities to actually cook or bake the recipes I wanted, just kinda of slipped by. I did manage to make two though! Although one was scarfed down so quickly by myself, hubbs and my little sister that when the thought surfaced to grab the camera there was pretty much an empty pan sitting in front of us. And that was the morning I made Cinnamon Rolls courtesy of the fine cooks on the Schooner Manitou, docked in Michigan. All I can say is they were the first yeast rolls that I've ever made and they were easy and soooooooooooooo delicious. All warm and gooey what with the cinnamon/sugar between the layers and the vanilla icing on top.. *swoon* I will be making them again and I will photograph how pretty they came out. =) The second recipe was thought about for quite some time - especially when I saw that one of the loves of my life, that sexy Laura Rebecca had made my first two choices.. the roasted potatoes and braised pork chops with cabbage. I shall still make them, especially from seeing how gorgeous hers turned out. But now we are having some especially lovely weather and I'm in the mood for a picnic, which led me to choose Marinated Focaccia Bread Sandwiches. The description reminded me of a muffuletta, a sandwich I've always wanted to make anyway. Unfortunately, I ran into a snag when purchasing the ingredients I'd need. We went to two different shops for focaccia bread (there was no way I could make my own) and struck out both times. So at the 2nd shop, I opted for Monterey Sour Dough. And as I was making the sandwich, I thought with just the meats and cheeses, it might be a little dry so I added a layer of roasted red and yellow peppers and also a layer of mild banana pepper rings. I made the marinade as per the recipe and used the salami, proscuitto and Provolone that was called for. I wrapped it tightly in plastic wrap and placed in my fridge. When I took it out the next day, my fridge smelled really quite good! He's sticking his tongue out at me. I cut the sandwich up into smaller, easier to handle portions and served this with a buffet of nibblers that we enjoyed on our "picnic" in front of the tube watching Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe *swoon* We both enjoyed this sandwich very much, but we agreed to try a different bread the next time and to double the marinade because it lended wonderful flavor but the bread was still a little dry. The addition of the roasted peppers and the banana peppers was spot on - they really went well with this sandwich. It was super easy to make, and was quite huge - plenty to serve 4 easily. Marinated Focaccia Bread Sandwiches Courtesy of Ships of the Great Lakes Cookbook, published by Creative Characters Publishing Group, 2001 2 (14 inch) Focaccia flat breads, homemade or purchased at an Italian bakery (Bobbi also works) Marinade 1/4 c. extra virgin olive oil 2 TBS. fresh basil 1 tsp. dried oregano 2 TBS. onion, finely minced 2 TBS. garlic, finely minced 2 TBS. green olives, finely minced Salt & Pepper to taste Filling 1/2 lb. salami, sliced 1/2 lb. proscuitto, thinly sliced 1/2 lb. Provolone cheese, sliced Combine ingredients for marinade and set aside. Cut a very thin top layer off each bread to expose bread and allow marinade to soak in. Spread 1/2 marinade on the cut side of 1 of the flat breads. Layer cheese, proscuitto and salami on marinated side of bread. Spread remaining marinade on cut side of second flat bread; place on top of layered filling ingredients. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight. Unwrap cut into squares and serve.