Croque monsieur

When my mom was visiting last weekend, she bought me cheese, one block of which was some emmental. That made me think of grilled cheese sandwiches, so I went to the store to buy some bread. And then I decided that I wanted to make a croque monsieur, which involves ham (didn't have) and bechamel sauce (have never made before). Not one to be daunted by something as little as not having an ingredient, I used salmon pate (also courtesy of my mom) in place of ham. And then I looked up some recipes for bechamel, and it didn't seem that hard. In the end, it was a success! Deliciousness.

So the first task was to grate some cheese. Ok, grate a lot of cheese.


Then, I made the bechamel. It was hardly a traditional sauce, as I went for the kind with an egg in it, and you're supposed to just use the yolk, but I didn't have any immediate uses for egg whites, and I hate wasting food, so I just beat the whole egg and used that. I also put a bunch of garlic in the sauce. It made everything taste garlicky, which was a good thing. And the final change was that I didn't add any nutmeg - I didn't have any.

Bechamel (Alex's version...)
Made ~3/4C?

2 tbs butter
2 tbs flour
~3/4C milk
1 egg
salt and pepper to taste
1 clove garlic, minced.

Mince the garlic. Melt the butter in a saucepan (or frying pan, if you're me). Once its melted, add the garlic, and cook that for just a little bit until it smells delicious. Add the 2tbs of flour all at once, and whisk until its smooth. It should be a thick paste-like substance now, with a couple lumps of garlic. Add the milk, and whisk some more. The milk thins things out, but then you cook it for another couple minutes (less than 5), and it thickened up again. Take it off the heat, and season with salt and pepper, tasting.

In a separate bowl, beat the egg. Add a little (~1/4C) of the hot bechamel to the egg to temper the egg, then add the egg-bechamel sauce back to the larger quantity of it. Whisk some more. Done! Set aside until you're ready for it.

Melt the butter.

Add the flour and whisk - it turns into a thick paste.

Add the milk, cook for a bit, and when it pulls away from the bottom of the pan, its thick enough.


Meanwhile, spread your salmon pate (or ham, if you're being all traditional - I think ham would have been better in this position than salmon pate, honestly) on one side of the bread. Mustard would be good here, too. Put some cheese on the other half, and close into a sandwich. I ended up taking off some of the cheese shown here, because I ended up making two sandwiches, and didn't feel like grating more cheese, so had to share the cheese.

Butter a baking dish, and put your sandwich(es) onto it. Spoon the bechamel over the top, nice and thick and gloopy. Top with more grated cheese, and bake for ~15 minutes at 400F.

After 15 minutes of baking, turn your oven to broil, and check every minute. Once the cheese is brown and delicious-looking, its done. Pull out the sandwiches.

Yum. One of these bad boys filled me up quite nicely after a 2hr run this morning...

To continue with the non-traditional way of making things, I topped the sandwich with avocado. Avocado makes everything taste even more amazing, because avocados are awesome.


Leftovers heat up nicely in a toaster oven, to get that crunchy crispy cheesy top again.