[Sacrelicious]

As requested by MD - "Croque Monsier" recipe, my favorite sandwich.

First step is to prepare a Bechamel sauce, its actually very easy.

Bechamel sauce is one of the 5 french mother sauces, and arguably the easiest to make, here is what you need:

Butter
Flour
Whole Milk
Onion
Clove
Bay
Nutmeg
Salt and Pepper (If you are making this for personal use, use black pepper, personally I think white pepper tastes like a barnyard, its necessary in a restaurant setting for "presentation purposes", but really, it tastes like garbage)

So theres two steps here, what you want to do is use a pot to bring your milk up to heat. The ratio of milk:roux in this sauce is about 4 ox roux:1L milk. Lets assume we are making a 0.5 litre portion, throw in half an onion into the pot chopped roughly, a bay leaf, 2 cloves, and a small amount of ground nutmeg, maybe a couple peppercorns. Gently bring it up to heat, dont bring it up to a simmer, as milk scalds easily. One tip I learned in school was to rinse the pot out in water, dump the water, but do not wipe out the bottom of the pot prior to adding the milk. It sounds illogical, but it actually provides a sort of barrier for scalding.

Next, make a white roux. White roux is a combination of equal parts butter and flour. You are going to melt the butter in a sauce pan, and add the flour to it, and gently cook the flour into the butter while stirring. You do not want to cook it very long though, if it starts to turn yellow it becomes what is known as a "blonde roux", this is not what we want for this sauce. Just cook it until it incorporates the flour into the butter and kind of thickens up a bit, then you want to remove the pan from the heat. The reason for this is that you want your roux to cool for a moment before adding your milk base, the difference in temperature prevents the roux from clumping in your sauce. In any case, return the pan to heat and slowly add your milk base along with the flavoring ingredients while stiring constantly to combine the roux with the milk base. Add one ladle and stir until smooth, add another, etc. You want to bring this to a low to moderate simmer.

Roux does not actually activate its thickening power until it simmers for a few moments, so while combining the two it may just look like liquid, but it will actually thicken. You want the consistency of a reduced cream sauce, if its too thick, you can add more milk (or cream, but I'll get to that later), if its too thin, what you can do is whip up a buerre manier (literally, kneeded together raw butter and flower until its incorporated, kneed the shit out of this stuff) and add it in small pieces to the sauce, again, letting it simmer and waiting until it thickens. Once you have the correct consistency, set it to a very, very low simmer and let the flavors all mix while stirring occasionally to prevent burning on the bottom of the pan. Season with S&P.

Personally, I like to add a bit more roux to my sauce, and then once it simmers add some cream for extra body. The clove and nutmeg are essential, use fresh nutmeg if possible and just shred it over a microplaner or fine grater and add it. You do not want the sauce to taste like either nutmeg or clove, you just want a tiny bit in the background to add a bit of depth to the sauce, or else it just tastes like reduced cream. When the sauce is finished, remove it from the heat, and swirl in a small pad of butter until it incorporates into the sace.

As for the actual sandwich, the preparation is not difficult at all:

Take some slices of a nice french loaf, lightly butter, and toast in the oven. Pull them out, spread some excellent dijon or spicy mustard on them, and fill with black forest (or any other kind, to be honest) thinly sliced ham, and gruyere cheese. Close the sandwich, spoon the bechamel sauce on top of the sandwich, and top with grated gruyere and, if you have it, either pedano or regganio parmesan, return to the oven, toast until the cheese is melted and then turn on the broiler for about a minute to lightly brown the sauce and cheese on top of the sandwich.

You are now in posession of literally the best sandwich on the planet.

If you want to step it up a notch, fry a sunny side up or over easy egg and throw it on top, you now have a croque madame, also an elite sandwich.

Enjoy the shit out of that, its penetrating gold.


Softban system:

Explanation: Those who are "softbanned" from the thread will be completely and utterly ignored. Despite thier interruptions, for all intents and purposes, they do not exist in this conversation. Should you take it upon yourself to reply to them, you will be softbanned.

Addendum: If you attempt to "defend" posters against the expected spam of the softbanned, you will also be softbanned. Should two pages be spammed with inults, ignore them. Trolling? Ignore it, or fear the softban.

SOFTBAN LIST:

Pouyasophy

[Sacrelicious]

Oh, and of course, did not mention, naturally when you are done with the bechamel sauce on the stove, strain through a sieve or collander, remove the chunks, bay, clove, etc. You can refridgerate this stuff for a few days, its applications are endless.

Your finished result should look something like this:

[MD]

Now that someone sane is in charge of the cooking thread, can we have a running tally of people who are soft-banned edited into the first post, with an explanation of the soft ban system?

So far: Pouyashopy.

[Sacrelicious]

Edited and fixed.

[Sacrelicious]

Updated with a full explanation of the system.

[MD]

This may end up as the least-retarded thread in SBR history.

[Sacrelicious]

Actually, I'm going to add one more addendum to the system.

[MD]

Excellent, I was thinking something similar. There could be 10 posts in a row by soft-banned posters with absolutely no bearing on the thread, as we should all be conditioned to simply ignore the posts and not read them. Salvation through morbid elitism.

[Boxscout]

I could never make that, but google tells me Bouchon has them and I am eating one tomorrow.

[Sacrelicious]

I could never make that, but google tells me Bouchon has them and I am eating one tomorrow.

Atta man! Its the perfect sandwich.

[Sacrelicious]

I could never make that, but google tells me Bouchon has them and I am eating one tomorrow.

Just looked up the menu, croque madame, make it happen. One day I'll actually stop being an underpaid sous chef and have enough money to go eat this stuff somewhere instead of just making it for people.

They make it with a mornay sauce, which is a variant of bechamel, but totally approptiate in this context.

[Sacrelicious]

I could never make that, but google tells me Bouchon has them and I am eating one tomorrow.

The "Moules au Verjus" would be excellent as well, but GODDAMN overpriced, anything more then 12$ on that dish is an astounding ripoff, still is an excellent dish.

[Sacrelicious]

Salooned? Really? VAUGHANY FOR MOD.