Croque-Végétarien & Croque-Monsieur

So, you know how there really wasn't much winter this year?

Its been like, November (but without the rain), all winter long.

We're so spoiled by it...  Because this year, any time it goes below 35 or is rainy, we're all 'ew, gross!  couch!  comfort food!'

Since our honeymoon in Paris was quite rainy and chilly, one of the newer additions to our 'ew, gross! couch! comfort food!' repertoire is the Croque Monsieur.  While in Paris there was more than one night where the sightseeing got in the way of the marathon dinner events that we planned for many of the nights and, as a result, we ended up at Cafe Le Depart-St. Michel more than once...  While it wasnt much more than our equivalent of a 24 hour diner, it was open 24 hours (important to NYers who are used to such things) and close to our hotel(s) to boot, so it worked.  And this cafe's croque végétarien was one of the best I had while we were there...

This version is my favorite of all of the ones I've had since leaving paris (admittedly, there havent been that many, but this one is good, i promise!) and will probably become my new standard, not to mention a regular part of the 'ew, gross! couch! comfort food!' rotation.

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Croque Végétarien & Croque-Monsieur

courtesy of me, as adapted from Ina Garten

Click here to import recipe directly into Pepperplate

6 slices good white bread

1 tablespoons unsalted butter
1.5 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1 c warm milk

1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper
Pinch nutmeg

3 oz Gruyere, grated
3 oz Emmentaler, grated
1/4 c freshly grated Parmesan

Dijon mustard

2 plum tomatoes, sliced

For Croque-Monsieur:
1/4 lb jambon de Paris

***

Preheat the oven to 400°.

Toast your bread in the oven on a cookie sheet - 5 minutes on the first side, then 2 minutes on the opposite side. Set aside.

In a small saucepan set over low heat, melt the butter and then add the flour, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon for ~2 minutes.

Slowly pour the warm milk into the pan with the butter/flour mixture and cook, whisking constantly, until the sauce is thickened, about 3 - 5 minutes.

Remove from heat and add the salt, pepper, nutmeg and stir.

Add in 1/4 c of the Gruyere, 1/4 c of the Emmentaler and all of the Parmesan and stir until cheese has all melted. Set aside.

Spread dijon mustard on all of the bread.
On half of the bread, lay out tomatoes on a single layer.
If desired, add a couple of slices of ham on top of the tomatoes. (croque monsieur)
Top the same slices with the remaining Gruyere and Emmentaler, about 1/3 of the total cheese on each.
Top each 'loaded' slice with one of the dijon-only pieces of bread.

Top each sandwich with about 1/3 of the bechamel (cheese sauce)

Bake the sandwiches for 5 minutes.

Switch your oven to broiler and broil for 3 to 5 minutes (depending on how close your heating element is to your sandwiches) or until the topping is bubbly and lightly browned.

Serve hot.

Open-Faced Goat Cheese & Avocado Sandwich

so, i'm totally obsessed with top chef masters this go around...  (season 3).  as much as i like to cook, i've never been a huge fan of any of the cooking shows until this one, but when they announced that Floyd Cardoz, former chef of Tabla - one of my all time favorite restaurants - would be a contestant, i decided to tune in.

As we've watched this season (because dont think i've allowed jordan to escape this one), one of our favorite topics is who's restaurants we want to visit...  I've been to Suvir's restaurant, Devi, but Jordan hasnt, so that's high on our list for this summer...  Floyd is set to open a new restaurant in the coming months and, of course, we'll be vying for reservations the minute it opens...

In addition to my New York Indians, Traci & Mary Sue were always high on my list.  Given that they round out the top 3 with Floyd, i decided to go looking and see just how long of a flight we'd need to take to get to their restaurants...  turns out its a pretty long one since they are both in CA...  however, my search for more info on their whereabouts landed me one of the most useful pieces of information ever...

all of the top chef recipes are available on the website.

now, i'm sure this isnt news to you, but like i said, i havent been watching this show!  I had NO IDEA!  Amazing!!!

so, just as i was learning this, it was about 98° outside...  and the thought of cooking dinner was pretty awful because, oven, EW...  however, i quickly remembered the avocado/goat cheese sandwich Mary Sue had made during the quickfire challenge just a couple of episodes ago and thought - ooh...  that.

So i went on my search and lo and behold, there it was...  just begging for me to recreate it... given my recent obsession with avocado (seriously, for the past 2 months, i've craved avocado every single day...) i was powerless to resist.

we did have to make one obvious tweak to it, given that i dont eat bacon, and i do suspect that real bacon would make it even better for those so inclined to eating that particular product, but even without it, this open-faced sandwich is a winner in my book - even if the microwaved version of it was a big loser on the show...

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Open-Faced Goat Cheese & Avocado Sandwich
courtesy of Mary Sue Milliken, via Top Chef Masters with minor modifications by me


Note: I've listed the sandwich ingredients first, but i would suggest making the dressing first so it has some time to sit so the flavors can meld

For the sandwich:
2 pieces of baguette, approximately 6 to 8 inches long each, sliced in half

1 avocado, seed and peel removed
2 oz soft goat cheese
1/4th of a lemon, juiced (prob about 1 tbsp?)
4-5 dashes garlic chili cholula
~ 1/4 tsp black pepper (freshly ground is best)

sea salt

1/2 of an heirloom tomato, sliced paper-thin


For the dressing:
(this makes way more than you will probably use on the sandwiches - dont feel compelled to use it all or you'll drown your other ingredients and end up with soggy bread...)

1 tbsp minced shallot

3 tbsp olive oil

2 tbsp red wine vinegar

2 tbsp bacos (meat eaters, feel free to use real bacon instead...)

salt & pepper (a few turns of the grinder of each seemed to work for us)

***

Prepare the dressing - mix all dressing ingredients together in a bowl, jar, emulsifier - whatever you want - and mix well/shake/whatever to combine.  Set aside.

Turn oven on to broil

Toast baguettes, cut side up, for 1 - 2 minutes under the broiler, so the edges get a bit golden and the bread itself is a little toasty.

Mash the avocado, goat cheese, lemon juice, cholula, and pepper together in a bowl.  The goal is to get a cohesive mixture that is fairly smooth with a few lumps remaining  (i had to use a wooden spoon to really break my avocado apart as it was just slightly under-ripe and then mashed the rest up with a fork)

Taste and season with additional black pepper and a little sea salt, if desired.  (note - it will taste a little bland at this point.  dont worry.  have faith.)

Spread mixture on the toasted baguette pieces and place back in the broiler for a minute or so to warm it up.

Remove from the broiler and top with thin slices of tomato

drizzle each piece with some dressing and serve immediately.

Tuna Salad Lettuce Wraps

my poor grandma J... she HATED to cook.

If she's reading this, she's rolling her eyes at me and wondering why in the world i would post any of her recipes...

but thats the funny thing about Grandma J - she hated to cook but she always did a pretty good job of it... which was a good thing, because she had this theory - if she bothered to cook it, you better bother to eat it.

Also as a result of her hatred of all things cooking, she was a devout recipe-follower... she didnt want to think, didnt want to experiment - just wanted to spend as little time and thought as possible on getting food that people would eat onto the table.

I was never reminded of this so much as i was when we would spend a week at the beach with her... we'd get these little bungalows and spend our days on the beach & evenings in the arcade. Nowadays, vacations (for me) include eating as a big part of them. But back then, eating was an afterthough... but it apparently made an impression none-the-less...

You see, a few weeks ago, the meat eater and i had good fortune combine and there was an available weekend coupled with an available beachfront condo... the only thing we didnt have was an actual fortune, so we accepted the condo and figured we'd cook all weekend...

i immediately wanted tuna with celery & lettuce on toasted wheat bread for lunch.

because thats what we always ate for lunch at the beach.

My typical tuna needs are much easier - no celery chopping, no lettuce garnish - hell, half of the time there isnt even bread... but the beach calls for something much more specific.

Since we've returned from the beach, i've held onto my need to have celery in my tuna salad (something which makes the meat eater gag - good thing he wasnt around grandma - she would have made him eat it!!!) and last week, combined my version of the beach tuna salad with lettuce leaves as wraps. because good god have we gotten a lot of lettuce from the CSA and really, there are only SO MANY dinner salads a girl can have...

see what i did there?
More CSA usage, FTW!

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Tuna Salad in Lettuce Wraps
Inspired by Grandma J

1 can albacore tuna in water, drained
2 tbsp light mayo
1 tsp spicy brown mustard
1 celery rib, diced
salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder (to taste)

6 large leaves red or green romaine lettuce

***

Combine first 4 ingredients
Taste and then season with more mayo, more mustard, salt, pepper, garlic and/or onion poweder, to taste (i generally do a shake of each one)

divide tuna between lettuce leaves and roll up

Pat yourself on the back for using CSA ingredients in non-obvious way.

lunch anyone?

when the weather gets warmer, my eating habits change. a lot.

one of my favorite springtime lunches includes 1/2 of a sandwich and a yogurt parfait of some sort... my favorites being the banana pots from pret. god, i love pret. i could move into a pret-attached-to-a-target-with-a-starbucks-inside and be happy forever. i really think i could.

but i digress...

in honor of earth week and my general nod towards increasing the hippy-dippy factor now that i'm no longer a stuffy professional, it occured to me that maybe, instead of going out and buying a pret pot in its own single use container each day - that maybe i could make my own? for less $ AND in a reusable container??? (oh, and wow - for WAY less calories, i think... i hadnt seen the calorie count until tonight. dude...)



these little guys are incredibly versatile... you really can use any combination of yogurt, fruit and granola (or other crunchy stuff - nuts, anyone?) you like. normally i'd go for bananas but since all of the bananas were way not ripe yet, i thought strawberries would be a good substitute... and added the banilla yogurt to get my fix.

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fake pret pot
courtesy of me

2 - 3 tbsp honey
1 - 2 strawberries
2/3 c Stonyfield Farms Banilla low fat yogurt
2 tbsp organic vanilla-coconut granola


place honey in bottom of a little dish/cup

cut up strawberry(ies) and put the pieces in the honey

dump the yogurt on top of those

top the whole thing with granola


can be eaten immediately or covered and refrigerated to take to work the next day.