Je Goûterai - I will taste

No. 29: Croque Madame Muffins – 30.3.12

As I posted the other day, I recently bought the cook book “The Little Paris Kitchen” by Rachel Khoo which hasn’t arrived yet (as I bought it off of Amazon) but I really really wanted to try some of her recipes! I went back onto the first episode of her tv show which the book I bought is based on and wrote down the recipe for her ‘Croque Madame Muffins’. The recipe isn’t actually written down anywhere online that I could find but I will post a link below to the youtube video of this particular recipe.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LrK0r4wG5U

I wrote this recipe to make 4 muffins and you will need a muffin tray!

For the Béchamel Sauce

1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp plain flour
200ml milk
a few gratings of nutmeg
½ – 1 tsp of Dijon mustard
pinch of salt and pepper

For the rest of the muffins

4 slices of sliced white bread or wholemeal or brown
a few tbsp of melted butter
4 slices of ham
4 small eggs (if you can’t get small eggs, that’s fine)
25-50g of grated cheese to top the muffins

Preheat the oven to 180oC

• First we want to make the Béchamel Sauce! Set a small to medium sauce pan on a medium heat and melt 1 tablespoon of butter. Whisk the flour in with the butter to make the roux which will thicken the sauce and slowly add the milk, whisking well and let thicken in between each addition. Finish this off with adding the nutmeg, Dijon mustard, season to taste and remove from the heat.

• Next, cut the crusts off of the bread and then use a rolling pin to roll each slice of bread to half it’s original thickness. Brush over a little of the melted butter and place into the holes of the muffin tray.

• Into each bread muffin add 1 slice of ham, then 1 egg (if you don’t have small eggs, when breaking your egg open, pour a little of the white away so the egg and the sauce will be able to fit into the muffin), a tablespoon of the Béchamel sauce and a sprinkling of cheese. Brush the edges of the muffin with a little more of the melted butter.

• Place into the oven for 15 minutes if you would like a runny yolk and then an extra 5 minutes if you want a hard yolk.

This is such a simple and gorgeously light meal! I used Whole meal bread which made it a little healthier and also used Alpro Soya milk, just because I didn’t have any normal milk! At first I felt the sauce and the yolk together were a quite rich combination, however this was complemented by the saltiness and sweetness of the Ham I used (Honey Roast sliced ham) and the mature chedder cheese I had used. I loved the different textures in this with the crunchy toast outside and then the creamy middle, especially with a runny yolk! I was worried the sauce wasn’t going to work with it, especially as Soya milk has a slightly different taste to regular milk but it was fine! This is such a cute, different way to eat eggs and I love it!