Last night I wanted a grilled ham and cheese and remembered reading about smothering a grilled ham sandwich with cheese. Maybe that’s a Croques Monsieur? Or a Monte Cristo? But none of the recipes I found sounded good. I flipped through an old cookbook and saw their riff on this, which was to basically dip a ham and cheese sandwich into an egg and milk (and oregano for them, I left that out) and cook it up like French toast. Jacques Pepin’s Croques Monsieur started on the stove and finished in the oven. His didn’t have the egg but I liked the idea of finishing it in the oven so the cheese would be very much melted.
The recipe in Let’s Eat In Quick and Delicious Weekday Meals had sliced tomato and used Fontina cheese and no mustard. Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home had the cheese on top I think and no egg finish. I don’t normally like messing with a good thing (aka a plain grilled ham and cheese sandwich) but this made it just enough more to feel like dinner rather than a sandwich.
Roman Style Grilled Cheese Sandwiches
Roman Style Grilled Cheese Sandwiches
Ingredients
- 4 slices bread
- Dijon mustard
- 2 slices of ham
- 4 slices of Cheddar cheese
- 1-2 eggs i used smaller home grown egg
- 1 Tbs milk or cream
- butter
Instructions
- Assemble the sandwiches by spreading mustard on each slice, then topping a two pieces of bread with cheese, then ham, then more cheese. Top with the other slices of bread.
- Mix together eggs and milk in a flat dish. Put a sandwich in the egg mix for 15-20 seconds per side so it can soak up a bit of the mix.
- Heat a frying pan and a pat of butter while the sandwich sits in the egg mix. Preheat the oven to 300.
- Cook each sandwich a few minutes on each side, adding a pat of butter before flipping so each side gets some butter.
- When the bread has lightly browned on each side, put the sandwiches onto a baking sheet and then put them into the oven and bake 5-10 minutes, flipping once halfway through, so that cheese is totally melted.
Definitely Monte Cristo. In another word- Delicous.