A croissant au jambon et au fromage is really easy to make and good to eat. The only hard part is making a béchamel sauce, if you decide to do so. You can substitute crème fraiche, for example, or cream cheese. You also need to grate some tastier cheese — Gruyère or Comté in France; Cheddar or Swiss cheese in the U.S. or other countries. If you really want to be authentic, you can make your own croissants, but in France and I think in most parts of North America, you can buy good croissants these days. I got these croissants au beurre at the supermarket in Saint-Aignan.
After you've made your béchamel — I use a very easy Jacques Pépin recipe for that — cut your croissants in half the long way to make a bottom half and a top half. Then you spread the béchamel fairly generously on the cut side of each half. Sprinkle some grated cheese on each side too. It will stick to the béchamel. Roll up a slice of sandwich ham (boiled ham, called jambon de Paris in France) and place it on one half of the cut croissant. Carefully turn over the half with the ham on it and place on top of the other croissant half to make it into a kind of sandwich. Put it in the oven for 10 or 15 minutes to melt the cheese and warm up the ham. Don't burn it!
It's a French croissan'wich — a croque-monsieur on a croissant. We had ours with frites and two salads: poireaux vinaigrette and salade de betteraves.
I’ve enjoyed these without the béchamel. My mouth is watering now.
ReplyDeleteI've really got to try this.
ReplyDeleteI made something similar trying to use up leftovers from the refrigerator. I had a bit of roasted chicken, a dab of cream cheese and chunk of pepper jack cheese and a couple lonely candied sweet pickle slices in a jar. I took the lone croissant and split it and made a sandwich of the leftovers and then put it into te air fryer until melted and crusty. I also made some sweet potato fries. Along with the dab of homemade three bean-celery-green pepper salad I too had a nice lunch. Heck! It would have cost 20 bucks at the bistro uptown. I never let leftovers go to waste. Ken always has the best foodie ideas.
ReplyDeleteI enjoy watching Jacques Pépin cook. We have croissants here now but they aren't as good as what you have in France.
ReplyDeleteIn San Francisco, there were several bakeries run by French people. They made good baguettes and croissants. Is there a French bakery in B'ham?
ReplyDeleteI just googled and found two promising bakeries in B'ham — Continental Bakery and Birmingham Breadworks. Both seem to have a good selection of French pastries.
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