Happy 2010! First Meal of the New Year: Croque Madames à la Natasha

Kari had the great idea of making Croques Monsieur/Madames for dinner on NYE. But after we ate our apps (roasted shrimp and king crab legs and tasso & gouda that the Oberheims brought over) we were full. So the Croques became our first breakfast of 2010 :)

Pretty straightforward except we made up the champagne mustard sauce (that’s the à la Natasha part):

• equal parts whole grain mustard (Maille)  and tarragon mustard (Edward Fallot)
• butter
• champagne/sparkling wine

Also, some shallot pepper on the eggs was nom nom nom. Those pesky egg rings don’t like to let go of the eggs. I wonder what Ronald McDonald uses for those EggaMuffins? At least our egg sammiches didn’t give us the shits. A drive-thru EggaMuffin trip requires the windows down on the ride home and no shortage of toilet paper at home.

Some cooking notes:
The bread didn’t have much structure, so we pan-toasted the heck out of one side and lightly toasted the other just to give it some crunch and stability. Next time, we’re gonna get some real brioche bread or something else with a little more character. Like Tartine, we just did it open-faced instead of a full sammich. When the slices are that thick, you don’t need a top piece of bread. We used Gruyère, not Emmenthaler. It was awesome. The Black Forest Ham was great, but would love to do with a boiled ham next time, like the ham on a real Jambon Beurre.

In any case, it was awesome. We ended up making another round of them immediately.

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