Croques

One morning whilst wandering lonely as a cloud I dreamed not of daffodils, but rather of croques. Wordsworth be damned as he'd probably been more of a Welsh Rarebit sort of person, and that's another issue.

While we were growing up, a Croque Monsieur was one of the snacks that my sister and I could make for ourselves. Now looking back the kind of things that we'd have been making would have made most self respecting foodies turn slightly green and pale, but regardless, croques are intricately linked with my earliest memories of cooking food.

Bringing things into the present, I work in a French restaurant, so Croque Monsieur and his wife are an essential part of our bar menu. But I'd never been quite satisfied, maybe it was the daily tarnish of staff food taking the shine of a fondly cherished memory, or maybe we weren't doing them right..

One tweet later, and I knew I wasn't alone....

So here's what I'm proposing - I'm going to play with the formula, already I'm seeing several camps developing. To Bechemel or not to Bechemel seems to be eliciting some quite trenchant opinions. Personally I'm quite interested in the issues of what breads to use, whether there is an ideal strength of cheese, and to what degree smoking the ham has on the final taste.

But I figure it's a work in progress, and, lets face it, regardless of what I come up with, it's never quite going to match the one you first had on that holiday, or the ones that your mother used to make in the steel griddle, but lets not let this dissuade us.

Croque it, I'm game for a challenge (also I quite like both ham and cheese :-))