Cook Something Pretty To Start Your Day Off Right

Waking up sleepy and hungry on a recent vacation to the San Juan islands, I made a pseudo Croque Madame. It actually sounds a lot fancier than it is. I ate a ton of them in Paris, because it seemed like every café served it. A Croque Madame is a French dish which is a Croque Monsieur with an egg on top. A Croque Monsieur is a hot ham and cheese sandwich, usually made with gruyere. So basically, a Croque Madame is a hot ham and cheese sandwich with an egg on top.

Ingredients

A hearty slice of bread (I had ciabatta, so I used that)

Enough cheese for a regular sandwich (whatever  kind you want)

3 slices of ham (Or whatever meat you want)

1 TBS of butter

1 fried or poached egg

Salt and pepper to taste

Now What?

Melt the butter on a medium heat, in a pan that will fit the sandwich, dip one side of one of the slices of bread and put aside. Lower the heat a touch. Now lay that second slice of bread in the rest of the butter and build your sandwich. Layer on the ham and cheese, and top with the bread. Made sure with that last piece of bread, the butter is facing out, so it will get nice and toasted when you flip. Once the bottom slice has browned nicely, flip the entire sandwich. Once both slices of bread are beautifully toasted, take your sandwich out of the pan.

If you used a lot of cheese, and the cheese isn’t nice and melted enough, pop it in the microwave for 15 second. Plate it, top with your egg and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

When you cut into the, the yolk tastes fantastic with the sandwich. In the picture above, it looks like I cooked two eggs, but in actually it was one egg with two yolks. I get those a lot. Either our chickens are exposed to too many damn hormones, or according to superstition, I’m having twins or dying tomorrow.

Bon Appetit!

-Joyce Huang