Café LA

As you have probably picked up by now, I love French food. There's not a French restaurant in the town where I live, but there are several in the relatively nearby city of Atlanta. Mine and my husband's favorite is Ani's Bistro, which favors Provençal cuisine, but has a dash of everything else, too. I always get the Moules Marinières (mussels in white wine sauce) and he always gets their Croque Monsieur. I always steal a bite of his, because it's so good. But we can't always go to Atlanta, and so I decided I should figure out how to make a Croque Monsieur. After all, it's just a fancy ham and cheese sandwich, right?

Well, yes and no. This is what I came up with. The first time I tried it, it was good, but not quite to the level I wanted. I used deli ham--good, fresh, thick deli ham, but it wasn't right. Jambon de Paris aka Parisian ham is famous, and it's just about the only ham I'll eat. So I pondered on why it was so good, and why I don't like normal American sandwich ham. It was then that I remembered--I do enjoy ham at Easter, and sometimes Thanksgiving. But it's not deli ham, it's HoneyBaked Ham. Theirs is on par with Parisian ham. Fortunately, we do have a HoneyBaked Ham Cafe in town, so the next time I went to make this sandwich, I stopped and got a half pound of Honey Baked Ham slices. It makes all the difference.

To be sure, you can make a decent croque monsieur with a good sweet/honey ham from your local deli. But if you want it to be over the top good, get some from a Honey Baked Ham store.

Also, realize up front that this is a very rich, heavy dish. You'll want something to cut through all that cheesy goodness. I recommend a good medium-bodied red wine and a salad to round out your meal. And if you find yourself unable to finish your sandwiches, they reheat just fine.




Croque Monsieur

Ingredients:
1/2 to 3/4 lb sliced ham (thick slices!)
2 tb butter
3 tb flour
2 cups hot milk
1 tsp sea salt or Kosher salt (If you don't have it, use 1/2 tsp regular salt)
1/4 tsp nutmeg
3 cups grated Gruyere cheese (about 8 oz)
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese (about 3 oz)
1 cup grated Fontina or Emmental cheese (about 3 oz)
6-8 largish buns/croissants, or very thick (1 inch) sandwich bread

Grate all your cheeses first, and set aside. Mix all of them together in a bowl, except for 1/2 cup of the Parmesan and 1/2 cup of the Gruyere, which you should keep separate.

In a small to medium saucepan (nonstick if you have it) melt the butter over medium heat. Once it melts, add the flour and stir (I use a whisk). Stir for about 2 minutes; if you've ever made a roux before, that's basically what you're doing here, b/c it's the first step of bechamel sauce....which is exactly what we're making. Once the two minutes are up, add your hot milk slowly. I add about 1/4 cup at a time, whisking it in as I go. It may get thin, but at some point, it will thicken to a gravy-like consistency. At this point, whisk in the salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Take off the heat and whisk in the 1/2 cup of Parmesan and 1/2 cup of Gruyere that you set aside. Ta-dah! You just made a Bechamel sauce. This is the hardest part of making a Croque Monsieur; the rest is just layering.

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit at this point.

Cut your rolls/buns/croissants in half (the way you would for a sandwich). Lay the bottoms out on a cookie sheet. Spread a small spoonful of the bechamel sauce you just made onto the top of each of the bottoms (hope that makes sense). Layer your ham slices onto each (use all your ham). Put another dollop of the bechamel sauce on top of the ham, along with a generous amount of the shredded cheeses. You should use half or slightly more than half of the shredded cheese for this step.

Now put the tops on top of the shredded cheese layer. Spread bechamel on the top. Put more shredded cheese on top. The bechamel sauce should be helping the cheese stick to the bread.

Put into the hot oven, and bake for about 10 minutes. If after 10 minutes the cheese doesn't have the nice browning that you want, turn the broiler on for about 2 minutes, and keep a close eye on it, b/c it's incredibly easy to burn things with the broiler on. Serve immediately. You'll probably need a knife and a fork. Bon appetit!

Protip: If you have leftover bechamel sauce or leftover grated cheese, save them for the next time you make a pasta dish, and throw them into the sauce. Or make cheesy toast with them.

If you find Gruyere to be too strong a flavor for you, you can always increase the amount of Fontina/Emmental and reduce the amount of Gruyere.

I was first introduced to this pastry/cookie via the vending machine on the first floor of CIDEF in Angers, France. CIDEF was part of the university where I spent my first semester abroad in France, and while on the campus, if my friends and I weren't in class or hanging out in our program director's office, we were often near the vending machines, catching a quick snack before going back to class.

The madeleines from the machine were okay. Not great, but not bad. Better than the dry ones you can get at Starbucks. At the time, they were one of the better snacks on offer, and definitely one of the more filling. At some point, I bought some from a pastry shop, and was surprised that they were even tastier than I thought they'd be. Freshness makes all the difference!

The great thing about madeleines is that they're really easy to make. The real trick is having a madeleine pan so that you get them in the proper shape. But even if you don't have a madeleine pan, you could still make them in mini muffin or even regular muffin tins. Amazon has some affordable madeleine pans. For the recipe below, I got about 24 madeleines, so I had to use my pan 2 times. Luckily, they bake very quickly. :)

Another issue with madeleines is the hump. Some claim that the hump is the sign of a good madeleine; others say madeleines with no humps are the marker of a good chef. All I know is that if you want the hump, fill the mold to the top of the edge. If you don't, fill the mold about 2/3 full.



Madeleines

Ingredients:

2 eggs (at room temperature!)

1/2 cup sugar

3/4 cup flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

pinch of salt

grated zest of one lemon

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp lemon extract*

1/2 tsp almond extract*

5 tb unsalted butter, melted and cooled

*If you don't have one or either of these, just use more vanilla.


Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease your madeleine pan, even if it's non-stick.

Relative temperatures are important in this recipe if you want your madeleines to come out crisp and light. Start by combining your dry ingredients(flour, baking powder, salt) in a bowl. Next, beat the eggs and sugar together at medium-high speed until they're thick and pale (about 2-4 minutes in a stand mixer).



Now, add the zest and the vanilla and other extracts. Beat until mixed in (maybe 15 seconds?). Next the fun part--folding in the dry ingredients! This is the only onerous part of madeleines; you want to be careful to fold in the dry ingredients (about a third of the dry stuff at a time) and not just mix it in, because you want to keep the lightness and volume that the whipped eggs are giving you. So just take your time, and once you have all the dry ingredients folded in, you then fold in the melted butter. Don't be dumb like I was once, and forget to fold in the butter at the end.

Most recipes I've seen for madeleines say that you should chill the batter for about 3 hours (up to 24 hours) before baking. I somehow didn't see that step in all the recipes I consulted, and went ahead and made them. They turned out fine. So if you're in a hurry, you can skip that step, though after filling the molds, you will want to put the remaining batter in the fridge to chill while each batch bakes.



Let each batch bake for somewhere between 6-12 minutes. Look for the edges to turn golden brown. You'll have to keep an eye on it for your first batch, because the time is going to depend on how hot your oven gets and the size of your madeleine molds. Mine are usually done within 7 minutes, but most recipes I've seen said 12 minutes.

When you get your madeleines out, toss them in sugar (powdered or regular both work). They're at their best when they're still warm from the oven, so be sure to taste-test/quality control at least one. ;) Serve within 48 hours. They go great with coffee, tea, as dessert, or as breakfast!

This is one of my favorite soups, and it's one you don't come across as often here in the US. It's creamy and very healthy. It's also a very forgiving and versatile recipe, and you can play with different assortments of veggies to figure out what you like best.

When I lived in France, we had variations on this soup every week, and we ate soup for 5 out of 7 nights. If you don't like or can't find a particular vegetable in the ingredient list, you can substitute in a similar veggie, no problem. The only things you probably shouldn't change are the shallot and the onions. You probably want to keep at least a couple potatoes for the starch/thickness they provide the soup. Everything else can be swapped for something else--even the herbs.

My host mom did a variant that took out most of the potatoes and swapped it for pumpkin. You can use yellow squash instead of zucchini, or add turnips, or parsnips, or almost anything, really. The biggest thing is to try to balance different veggies, so that you don't get a soup that tastes of one particular vegetable (unless that's what you want). Beef boullion or broth has a more pronounced (and as my host sister said, bizarre) flavor, but it works well enough if you've got red wine instead of white. You also don't have to make this soup in such large quantities; it halves very easily.



Ingredients:
6 large red or golden potatoes
1 med-large leek
1 shallot
4 garlic cloves, peeled
2 medium zucchini
5 large carrots, peeled
8 oz whole mushrooms (button or baby bella are ideal)
4-5 pearl onions or 1 baby vidalia onion
1 very large heirloom/ugli tomato (or two normal size vine-ripened tomatoes)
2 bay leaves
1 bouquet garni (3 sprigs of thyme, 1 sprig rosemary, 4 sage leaves, tied together with twine)
2 chicken bouillion cubes+water OR 6 cups of chicken broth/stock
1/2 cup white wine
Also, you need either an immersion blender or a normal blender if you want the smooth texture.

Put a couple of tablespoons of olive oil or butter in a large soup pot. Peel garlic cloves, shallot, and onions. Chop in half, then toss into the pot along with the bay leaves and the tied up herbs. Note: If you don't have fresh herbs to make a bouquet garni, sub in 2 tsp thyme, 2 tsp sage, 1/2 tsp rosemary. Let this heat up on low while you prep the other veggies.

Rinse the leek, chop off the root and top inch of green part and throw that away, then chop the rest of it up (1 inch slices are fine). Rinse it in a strainer, then add to the soup pot along with the mushrooms. Turn the heat up to medium high. Chop the carrots and zucchini, add to the soup pot. Peel the potatoes (I left some of the skins on because red potatoes are hard to peel), chop into 1 to 2 inch cubes. Add to soup pot. Chop the tomato, add to the soup pot. Rough chop is good enough--remember, you're going to blend all of this later, so nothing has to be perfect.

Stir everything up, then add the remaining ingredients. The liquid should just cover the veggies (if it doesn't, just add a little more chicken stock). See the photo below:



Cover and cook on medium high for at least 30 minutes. Check and stir occasionally. Once the potatoes and carrots are soft, you can turn off the heat. Remove the bay leaves and the bouquet garni.

If you have an immersion blender, you can blend the soup at this point. Have some water/chicken stock on hand in case you need to thin up the soup to blend more easily. If you have to use a traditional blender, let the soup cool for awhile, then puree in batches. Either way, ideally you blend the veggies until you have a thick, creamy smooth soup. At this point, you'll want to add salt and pepper to taste. You can heat the soup back up in the pot to serve, or store it in the fridge and heat up individual servings. It makes enough soup for 7-10 servings, depending on size of the bowls. To garnish, add a splash of cream, some grated parmesan cheese, or a sprig of thyme.

Voila, a very healthy soup with no fat except for the olive oil/butter used at the very beginning.