A Croque-Madame…

Croque-Madame

...my take on a French classic. The croque-madame is one of many variants of the traditional croque-monsieur, a grilled ham and cheese sandwich (typically with a béchamel on top). 

Now, my version isn’t exactly grilled...or a sandwich...I suppose if I was going to get cheffy about it I would call it a deconstructed croque-madame as I have taken the elements and put them together my way. Whatever you want to call it, it is also the most decadent and indulgent breakfast going!

The first thing to do it get a béchamel going. For this dish I keep it really simple. Large knob of butter and a tablespoon of flour to make a roux and while stirring slowly add milk until you get a thick but pourable sauce. Pinch of black pepper and the sauce is done. Keep it on a very low heat to keep it warm and give it an occasional stir while making the rest of the dish. Do keep an eye on the sauce though as you may well need to add a dash more milk at some point to save it thickening up too much (which is what happened to me with this one).

Next up is the toast. Take a couple of slices of thick white bread (possibly the only time I will recommend using a sliced white), cut the crusts off and butter it liberally on both sides. Get a hot frying pan and fry off the bread on both slides. It needs to be hot to get the bread nice and crispy. Remember “croque” comes from “croquer” - “to crunch” so it needs to be crispy!

Put the toast on a oven proof plate, put some sliced ham on top of the toast along with a little bit of grated cheese and then put this in the oven at 100C to keep it hot and start melting the cheese.

Back to the frying pan. Add a little vegetable oil and then fry a couple of eggs. If you like your yolks runny (and, frankly, is there any other way) fry them until they are just cooked.

Quickly get the plate out of the oven (turn the oven up to 200C at this point) and put the eggs on top of the cheese and ham. Then pour the béchamel over the top and put back in the oven for 5 minutes.

Out of the oven and serve. Pure indulgence on a breakfast plate.

Sweet Lamb

No, not the rally stage but rather an idea I had for cooking some lamb today. Very much a first try it turned out tasting very nice indeed, though it is far from a finished idea.

Simply, I was putting a half leg of lamb in a roasting dish and wondered what would happen if I put some light muscovado sugar over the top. So, lamb in the dish, a quartered onion, mixed herbs and then a covering of muscovado and into the oven...

When the lamb was cooked the sugar and herbs were scraped off into the dish and the lamb put to rest. The dish went onto the hob and the juices (with the dissolved sugar) brought to the boil. Splash of madeira and the whole lot was thickened up with a roux. This was then poured over the sliced lamb and mashed potato.

The lamb was certainly sweet but it wasn't overpowered by the sweetness. It was a very good piece of lamb anyway and just seemed lifted somehow.

However, not a finished dish. Too much sauce on the plate and I'd thickened it far too much. Tempted to try and simply thicken it with some corn flour next time.

Fish Pie and Béchamel Sauce.

Fish pie - I don’t know about any one else but this is indulgent comfort food for me. One of those lovely warm comforting dishes that is just great on a cold day. This is my generic fish pic recipe and will vary slightly each time depending on what ingredients I’ve got at the time. It’s actually quite simple, even though I know some people break out in a cold sweat at the mention of words like “Béchamel”.

I’ll describe the Béchamel sauce first then go on to describe how I do the fish pie.

Béchamel is one of Escoffier’s five mother sauces of French cuisine. Start off with a saucepan of milk and add a quartered onion and a few cloves. Bring to the boil and then simmer for 20 minutes. Strain out the onion and cloves and keep the milk to one side. In another pan add equal quantities of flour and butter. Mix the flour into the butter as it melts and keep stirring on a low heat for a couple of minutes - you need to cook the flour out but you don’t want it browning. At this point slowly add in the milk whilst continuing to stir the mixture. The ratio of milk to flour and butter will dictate how thick the sauce is - adjust to suit as you prefer. 

Why is this called a mother sauce - whilst it is a sauce in itself, it is also the base for other sauces. Add some grated cheese to your Béchamel and it becomes a Mornay sauce for example.

Fiddly - maybe, but I think it is worth the effort.

Difficult - No!

Right, onto the fish pie. I’m not giving out any specific quantities as they will vary depending on the size of your pie dish and how many people you are cooking for. And, to be honest, I only measured out one thing at the beginning - I three quarter filled the pie dish with milk in order to see how much sauce I needed. That milk then went in a saucepan for the Béchamel.

Next, add some veg to the bottom of the dish. Yes, you read that correctly, vegetables! I like to add a bit of colour and texture and it makes the pie more of a complete meal in itself. Usually this will be some peas and a carrot which has been diced up into ~ ½ cm cubes. On top of this put the fish - put enough to cover the bottom of the dish and vegetables. Here you can use any fish you like. In this case I used some haddock, salmon and smocked pollock and then put the rest of the vegetables on top along with the onion I had strained out of the béchamel (remember to throw the cloves away though - don’t add them to the pie!).

Pour your Béchamel sauce over the top and give the dish a few gentle taps on the work top to make sure the sauce distributes evenly. Finally add mashed potato over the top of the sauce - just try not to make it too “thin” as I did here - bit too much milk added hence the way it looks. Whoops! Still, no one’s perfect and it tasted good.

Now just pop it in the oven. 45 minutes, 180C Fan and enjoy.

Ingredients:

Bechamel:

Milk

Onion

Cloves

Butter

Plain flour.

Fish Pie:

Fish (I used salmon, haddock and smoked pollock here but use whatever you like. Cod, prawns also work well)

Veg - your choice but I find peas and a diced carrot work well.

Béchamel sauce

Mashed potato