My love for French food goes a long way. Something grilled with a bucket of creamy sauce and a scoop of beautiful French butter: I’d give up watching my waist and get wasted with it. Or in this case, layers of ham, cheese and butter and a crunchy bread to press it down, making it the best sandwich in my books. I’d go an extra mile to defend French food and shoot people who wouldn’t like a good Croque Monsieur for breakfast š {Croque Monsieur? Isn’t that something for mister?} Well, we’ll brush a little history for you here: the nameĀ is from the French words Croquer (“to crunch”) and monsieur (“mister”). Crunch the mister or crunch mister would be the literal translation for this one. {Ah, well… next time you want to shoot your hubby darling, crunch the mister instead.} The sandwich’s first recorded appearance in a Parisian Cafe’s menu was in 1910 and its earliest mention in literature appears to be in Volume II of Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time” in 1918. If you want make your breakfast extra special, try to crunch the French way!
Croque Monsieur
Time taken: 20 min
Taste-o-meter: Savoury
Ingredients:
- Butter: 3 tsp
- Kosher salt: ideally a pinch or two
- Freshly ground pepper: a pinch
- Nutmeg: a pinch
- Freshly grated Gruyere cheese: 3.5 cups
- Freshly grated Parmesan cheese: 1/2Ā cup
- French bread or any sandwich bread (toasted): 8 slices
- Ham (sliced): atleast 8 tbsp
- Dijon mustard
Method:
Mix the cheeses. Lightly butter your bread and toast in the oven. Smear a little Dijon on the breads. Mix pepper, nutmeg and salt in a bowl. Place cheese first, then ham, and sprinkle your salt-nutmeg-pepper mixture. Put one more bread on top of this and repeat the topping, but this time, the cheese should be on top. Bake at 160C until the top is golden.Ā Rest for 1 minĀ and bite away!