Croque-monsieur; Gluten-free version of this traditional French supper, brunch or snack

Croque-monsieur is a fancy, hot cheese and ham sandwich and a traditional French street, fast or snack food. There is even a version for Madame, with sliced, pan-fried chicken but we don't mention that here, at least not in earshot of our poultry.

 

Traditional Restaurant and Street Food in France

Croque-monsieur and Croque-madame are the sort of snacks you can get in a bar, bistro or roadside café outside the regulation times for eating lunch in restaurants, that is from 12 to 2.00pm. In France, unless you live in a very busy city or all-year-round tourist area, lunch hours are sacrosanct. It is also the mark of a good restaurant when these hours are observed, being an excellent indication that there is a resident chef and thus that the food is prepared and cooked on the premises. Further evidence for finding a good traditional restaurant is to visit the local market and see what is on offer, particularly in the way of fish, meat and vegetables. Then when you are choosing a restaurant,  notice what is being offered as the plat du jour. If it is the same as that on offer in the market, then you have a good chance the food is local, fresh and cooked from scratch. This will be even more obvious at an organic restaurant, which is the only kind of restaurant here that we eat in and many of which are only open for lunch, the main French meal of the day.

There is a whole host of what might be considered as traditional French street or 'fast food', although this can vary in authenticity and palatability. The ubiquitous Croque-monsieur is no exception. It was a long time ago but I still have vivid memories of a Parisian bistro, micro-waved version, served complete with black cellophane! Much of the best street/fast food in France is actually regional and furthermore many recipes that came into being through a fusion of national cuisines. Thus in the South of France near the Italian border, they have a delicious, brioche-based tart called Pissaladière or Pissaladiera, which is covered with anchovies, herbes de Provence, onions and olives. In Alsace on the border with Germany they have Flammekueche, Flammkuchen, Tarte flambée, (pictured above) and you can find the recipe for that here.

Gluten-free Version

I am actually very fond of snack food in the evening, for, with the way we live here on our smallholding/forest garden, we tend to get the poultry out before we breakfast and for this, we return to our roots, with a copious meal at 10.30pm. We do not eat again until the evening and at this time we like to eat a great percentage of our food raw, so huge fresh kitchen-garden mixed salads, made with whatever we have in season. Thus something like a pizza, or tarte goes very well with that to make a complete evening meal

Over the past few years we have systematically tried to cut grain out of our diet, so that it now only forms a small percentage of our weekly food.

Ingredients:

Potato
Parma Ham (the hock which I get at my organic butcher's for a fraction of the slice-price.)
Raw cream
Raw milk hard cheese - here I'm using Emmental

 

 

Temperature:

240°C or 460°F

What type of potato to use:

For mashing I am using Ditta and Agria, (left), what in French are called 'firm' and 'tender' potatoes and are locally grown. Agria is referred to in English as general purpose and Ditta as waxy. 

Method:

Take a weight of cooked potato equivalent to the amount you would make in pastry to line your chosen dish. You can add more depending on how hungry you are, thus how thick you want the base to be! Decide by the state of the skins whether or not to peel your potatoes. Hand mashing is best, mechanical appliances tend to make for a gluey texture in my experience.

Press the mash potato into a well-buttered dish and then cook at the temperature indicated above on a high shelf until the base is firm-ish to the touch and the edges are beginning to crisp up. This takes around 8 to 10 minutes. 

 

Slice your ham, parma or otherwise, thinly and dot over the potato base. I'm using a dish that is 25cm or 10" square, with an internal depth of 25mm or 1". 

 

 

Take two large heaped spoons of raw cream and mix them with approximately 80 grams or 3oz of grated cheese. Dot this over the ham and base. Season with black pepper.

Cook for another 10 minutes on a high shelf or until the cheese and cream mix has formed a melted golden layer over the whole surface. Enjoy with a salad of crisp seasonal vegetables and fruits. 

If you've enjoyed this post then please feel free to share it, ask questions and/or comment.
Hope to see you here again for another recipe from an old farmhouse in Normandie,

Sue

Some ideas for cookware and utensils:

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© 2015 Sue Cross

Flammekueche, Flammkuchen, Tarte flambée, Alsation-style pizza - Fantastic breakfast, suppertime, anytime dish from Eastern France

Alsace, is perhaps best known for its crisp white wines, beautiful architecture and nesting storks but it also famous for its distinctive and delicious cuisine. The first Tarte flambée we came across, was served hot and straight from the bread oven at an organic dairy farm gathering in Brittany to celebrate the Fête du lait. This latter, which takes place all across France in early June, is a big open-air breakfast and farm festival and if you ever see one advertised - go! 

Below is my version of this dish, from our woodcooker, so minus the smoky flambée but plus a little abstract art.

You'll probably appreciate this whimsical idea more in the full tin version. 

Framed edible art anyone?

The origins of this recipe were supposedly the result of thrifty bakers testing their bread ovens for temperature but my guess is, this was rather a good excuse for a late supper or hearty breakfast! The three names (see post title) used for this dish, sic., Alsation, German and French, embody and celebrate the crossover of cuisine and cultures.

The traditional ingredients for Flammekueche are crème fraîche, lardons aka cured breast of pork or pork belly cut into strips and onions, all arranged onto a thin pizza-type dough base. However, if you don't eat pork, there are many delicious alternatives, such as diced sun or oven-dried tomatoes. Pictured below are some I prepared last year and I'll be sharing how, why and when I make them in the next blog post.

As you will be aware, if you are following my blog, we eat organic meat on a small budget, so I am always working out ways to get the best value from my butcher. In the case of this recipe, it is paradoxically better for me to use my half price heel of ham or my 5 Euro end of Parma, rather than the more expensive lardons. The cost difference is due to labour, as lardons, although from a cheap cut, are usually sold diced and I can do my own slicing! However, depending on what's available, you may be able to buy a piece of cured pork belly directly from the whole joint, so if you want to be a purist, then I would go for this.

From the point of view of the dough, in this recipe we are using a bread making machine. This because Andy, who is chief bread-maker in our family, developed a flour allergy some years ago, quite common with people who always make their own bread. I actually think our home-raised quail eggs (direct link to my organic quail article) he took for hay fever and eczema will have cured this because he can now make scones by hand but we'd rather not tempt fate with constant contact.

Ingredients

For the dough

300g 11oz strong white flour
½ teaspoon of dried yeast (I use Dove's Farm)
1 - 2 tablespoons olive oil
generous pinch of raw sea salt
170ml water




For the topping
    

Red Onion - One large or two medium 

Raw crème fraîche - 1 tablespoon

Ham - I used two kinds this time, strips cut from a heel of jambon blanc and  jambon braisé et fumé (a braised and smoked ham). These are both essentially what is left of large whole hams, i.e the pieces that will no longer fit the machine to make suitable slices.

A little green pepper for added colour

 
Our Tin (just to give you an idea of coverage) 37cm x 27cm or approx 15" x 11"

Cooking Times

15 - 20 minutes or until just crisp in an oven pre-heated to 230°C or 450°F

Method

Add all the dough ingredients to the basin and set the machine to 'pizza'. Follow the order of introducing the ingredients as per the instructions on your machine. In ours they are thus: yeast, flour, salt, oil, water.

Meanwhile prepare the ingredients for the topping. 



Slicing the pepper and onion into thin rings and/or strips....

....and breaking down some of the ham heel(s) into fine 'lardons'.

When the dough is ready, remove it from the pan and knock it back. This is a process by which CO_² is removed from the dough. This is a flat bread so you don't want it to rise too much.

It is then ready to roll out.

Place dough in the buttered tin, I then leave it to prove for a few minutes on the  top of a rack on top of the wood cooker. This allows it to relax and will make for a lighter base.

Once you notice it is starting to rise, then it is ready for the topping.

Carefully spread the crème fraîche onto the base, if you are using raw thick farm cream like mine then it can be quite tricky to get an even layer. Just do your best, as once in the oven it will melt across the dough.

 

Now let your artistic temperament have free range.

For Cookery is a branch of the Arts

Cook until crisp

Serve with a fresh green salad and if you like, a traditional glass of organic beer.

Some Useful Ingredients & Utensils

If you've enjoyed this post then please feel free to share it, ask questions and/or comment.

Hope to see you here again for another recipe from an old farmhouse in Normandie,

Sue

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© 2014 Sue Cross

Chickpea pancake (Pudla) with Parma ham, the Indian classic meets an Italian delicacy.

The Parma ham is optional, this being an experiment we made with our usual chickpea pancake recipe. However, it was so delicious and combined with a fresh green salad, I thought I'd post it as the example of our take on this famous Indian bread alternative.

We eat chickpea pancakes on a regular basis, they make a tasty accompaniment to all kinds of snacks, main course and supper dishes. I was intrigued to marry, what might be thought of as a distinctly Indian, Gujarati 'bread' with an Italian artisanal ham but actually there is a tasty Tuscan flatbread also made from chickpea flour.  'Cecina', baked or shallow fried, also found in the cuisine of the Côte d'Azur, in particular Nice, is said to date from Ancient Rome. It's a bread we have often in the Winter with soup and I will be including the recipe here when the temperatures begin to drop!

A word about Parma ham and other deluxe items

For people who live simply, we include some unusually luxurious items in our organic homesteader/smallholding lifestyle, these being Parma ham and Jambon de Paris, quail eggs and a whole range of seafood. How do we do it? Well the latter two are easy, we raise the quail ourselves and live by the sea, in a major French shellfish area, where gleaning from the ocean bed is pretty much a way of life. 

With regards to the ham, that is gleaning too, of sorts, for when people are paying top dollar for an item they want the best cuts. So the little bit at the end of the ham, and I say that advisedly as in many cases it weighs around a kilo, is sold off by our organic butcher as a talon or heel and at a fraction of the price.

Prosciutto di Parma or Parma ham, for those of you unfamiliar with it, is a raw, naturally air-cured leg of pork. Sea salt is the only preservative used and it can take from one to three years to cure. To find out more there is a film available here

Parma ham is eaten raw as an hors d'oeuvre but it is also a fantastic cooking ingredient.

As you can see once my talon is unwrapped I have an elegant sufficiency for so many recipes. The skin, I hang on the tree for the birds, that is unless my chickens get there first and pull it off the branches!

Basic chickpea pancake

 

Ingredients

140g (5oz) sifted chickpea flour

A generous pinch of sea salt

250ml  water

5 cloves of garlic

1 medium (red) onion

Oil or butter for cooking

Method

Put flour and sea salt into a bowl. Slowly add the water whilst mixing, so as to form a smooth batter. Peel and finely chop the garlic and onion and add to mixture. Leave to stand for at least half an hour.

Adding the Parma ham

 

Slice and chop a small quantity of ham. To bring out the flavour,  sautée for a few minutes and add to batter.

As an alternative to this try adding fresh turmeric root, chopped and  sautéed, along with other spices such as coriander, chillies and black pepper.

Melt cooking fat in a frying pan, I use certified sustainable organic palm oil. Depending upon the size of your pan, ladle in sufficient batter to form one or two thin pancakes, about 125mm (5") diameter. Leave to cook for approximately three minutes. Lift the edge of the pancake to test if it is cooked, it should be a golden brown in colour. Flip over but add additional fat to cook the second side, as these pancakes are butter-hungry!

Once cooked, set aside in a warming drawer or low oven. We added a freshly picked salad from the garden dressed with a simple vinaigrette of olive oil and raw apple cider vinegar.

Enjoy!

Please feel free to comment, ask questions and share.

Hope to see you here again for another recipe from an old farmhouse in Normandie,

Sue

Return to 'WHAT'S ON THE MENU' for more Simply Organic Recipes

© 2014 Sue Cross