Fancy Pants Sandwiches to Keep You Running
I don't care! Take me to the Recipe!
When you're preparing for the holidays, you need a solid lunch to keep you going, this week's recipe provides just that. With a delicious grilled cheese that's dressed up enough that it'll leave you full, but not so over the top you're going to run out of steam just cooking it.
Sometimes you try a recipe the first time and it turns out fantastic. Sometimes you try it out as written and it ends up going horribly wrong. That's what happened with this week's recipe of "Very Fancy Grilled Cheese and Fancy Gravy" as our Tiniest Kitchen helper dubbed it. (If you want to be fancy though, you'll just call it a Croque-Monsieur au Bleu.
Initially, the recipe called for half of a sweet onion, only 1 slice of thinly sliced ham per sandwich, and only 1 cup of milk for the sauce. This... this ended very badly. Between the original recipe plus the poor choice of a black-coated nonstick pan, we ended up with a very dead set of sandwiches. (we'll share how to save those down at the bottom. *) So, we reworked the recipe and came up with this beauty to share with all of you.
Ingredients:
Sandwich
2 ounces blue cheese
2 ounces mozzarella
1/4 sweet onion minced
8 slices sourdough bread
8 slices of ham
2 tsp Dijon mustard
coarsely ground black pepper, to taste
2 Tbsp unsalted butter, melted
2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
Sauce:
4 Tbsp unsalted butter
4 Tbsp all purpose flour
2 cups milk
2 Tbsp Dijon mustard
grated nutmeg
cayenne pepper
salt
coarsely ground black pepper
Start off by coarsely grating your blue cheese and mozzarella using the largest size of your box grater, mix them together by tossing them lightly. Set that back in the fridge to chill while you work.
Line the broiler tray with aluminum foil. Preheat your ovent o 300*F.
Make your sandwiches first, as the sauce shouldn't be made too far ahead, it'll become too thick if left to wait.
Take your cheese mixture and remove roughly 4 tablespoons from the bowl. Set that into a smaller bowl and set it aside for later. Now add the onion to the original mixture and toss a second time.
Lightly toast your bread in the toaster. Lay ham slices on four slices of bread that have been lightly smeared with mustard. Pack the cheese mixture into a 1/2 cup measuring cup and then invert it onto a slice of ham, pressing down with your fingers to compress the cheese. Coarseley grind lack pepper over the top of the cheese. Repeat the process with the remaining slices. Top each with a slice of bread and press down gently to compact again.
Using a pastry brush, pain the top slice of each sandwich with butter. (You want to be a little heavy handed with this.) Warm your olive oil in a skillet on low heat. (and whatever you do DO NOT use a dark coated nonstick pan. Just back away from it and go to the store to get a different skillet. A dark pan will burn your bread. Ask us how we know.) Cook 2 sandwiches at a time on medium0low heat. Press down firmly with a spatula and brown for about 2-3 minutes or until the bread is crisp. Flip over the sandwiches, paint the top slice of bread with butter, and brown until the bottom slice is crisp and the cheese is starting to melt.
Place each sandwich as you make it in the oven on the baking sheet to keep warm. When all 4 sandwiches are in the oven, turn off the heat and preheat the broiler.
Lay the sandwiches on the broiler pan, top each with the Mustard Cream Sauce and 1 Tbsp of the reserved cheese mix. Pop them under the broiler for 3-5 minutes or until bubbly and golden. Serve immediately with a fork and knife.
Making the Mustard Cream Sauce
in the saucepan, melt the butter, add the flour and whisk well. Slowly whisk in 1 cup of milk and cook until thickened and bubbly. Whick in mustard, nutmeg, cayenne, salt and pepper. Take a taste and add more spices or milk as needed. You don't want the sauce to be too thick with this, so add the second cup of milk as needed to keep it at a 'sauce' consistency rather than 'gravy.'
Let's say you've gone through all of this and you ended up with a murdered sandwhich anyway. Maybe you ignored us and used a black pan anyway. Maybe you put the heat too high. Maybe you thought "I LOVE onions and I don't want to use that little." Or maybe you got called away to save your neighbor's cat up a tree. Whatever, your sandwich is blackened and it's too full of onion. It can still be fixed. Start off by pulling apart your sadwich and setting the ham to the side. Now apply a little melted butter to your pan and set it at the lowest possible heat. Put one slice of bread in it at a time, onion & cheese mixture on the pan. You want the cheese to become gooey and the onions to be translucent. Now cover the pan and grab a second one. you're going to fry up an egg. However you and yours prefer your eggs to be fried, do that. (Personally, we think over medium goes very well with this.) Once your egg is done, put the sandwich back together, except this time you're not going to make a 'sandwich' out of it. Instead of having everything together in the middle, you want it to be cheese mix, bread, cheese mix, bread. This way you have a solid surface to put your egg on top of. Finally, take your sauce and drizzle that over the top. Yes, it sounds weird, we know, but it tastes amazing. The tang of the mustard and the cayenne plus the gooey mixture of cheese, egg and onion? It's an amazing lunch.
Oh, and if you wanted you could put your ham back in there somewhere too.
What about you? What are some of your worst kitchen mishaps? Let us know over on our Facebook page or in the comments below. We'd love to hear from you.