Croque Madame — The French Café Classic
30 min · Medium
#comfort#french#kid-friendly#weekend
A Paris corner-café lunch you can make at home: toasted bread, salty ham, a blanket of béchamel blistered under the grill, and a fried egg on top waiting to flood the whole thing with yolk. Rich, unapologetic, and worth every minute of the weekend it takes.
Ingredientsfor 4 portions
- 8 slice Sourdough Bread, thick-cut
- 200 g Ham, good-quality, thinly sliced
- 180 g Swiss Cheese, grated; Gruyère if you can find it
- 40 g Unsalted Butter
- 30 g All-Purpose Flour
- 350 ml Whole Milk
- 2 tsp Dijon Mustard
- 0.3 tsp Ground Nutmeg, freshly grated if possible
- 4 large egg Large Eggs
- 0.5 tsp Sea Salt
- 0.5 tsp Black Pepper
Steps
- Start the béchamel: melt most of the butter in a small saucepan over medium heat, whisk in the flour and cook for 1–2 minutes until it smells faintly biscuity — that cooks out the raw flour taste.
- Pour in the milk a splash at a time, whisking hard after each addition so no lumps form. Simmer for 3–4 minutes until the sauce thickly coats the back of a spoon.
- Off the heat, stir in the mustard, nutmeg, salt, pepper and about half the grated cheese until smooth and glossy. Heat the grill or broiler to high.
- Toast the bread lightly on both sides, then build each sandwich: a thin smear of béchamel, a fold of ham, a scatter of cheese, and a second slice on top.
- Spread the remaining béchamel generously over the tops and right to the edges, then blanket with the rest of the cheese.
- Grill for 4–5 minutes, until the topping bubbles furiously and blisters dark brown in patches. Watch it closely — it goes from golden to burnt in under a minute.
- While they grill, fry the eggs in the last of the butter over medium-low heat until the whites are set and lacy at the edges but the yolks still wobble.
- Crown each sandwich with an egg, crack over more black pepper and serve at once — the point is to cut through and let the yolk run into the béchamel.
