Nigella's Croque Monsieur Bake.

I tried this recipe the other week when staying at my Mum’s, she made it for me and a friend in place of a fry up.  It was just as nice! She called it a savoury bread and butter pudding but if your looking it up it’s Nigella Lawson’s Croque Monsieur  bake!

To Make this recipe you need:

6 slices of bread

3 eggs

Half a pint of milk.

About half a block of cheese.

A pack of ham

Some mustard

A sprinkle of salt and pepper

(A bit of butter if your being really bad!)

To make this I got out all my ingredients and started off buttering my bread, grating cheese on to it , popping ham on to that and then putting mustard on top of the butter on one slice of bread. After I did that I popped the two slices of bread together, then cut it in half to make two sandwiches, then put these in a casserole dish.

Now most normal people would repeat this process two times at this point  but I decided to experiment with the mustard...  I tried using less butter and more mustard on one of the sandwiches, then for the last one I decided to completely get rid of the butter altogether and use loads of mustard!

When I’d made up all the sandwiches I whisked the egg and milk together. 

Then I poured this mixture over the sandwiches and sprinkled the salt and black pepper over it.  Where the mix didn’t cover completely I spooned some of it back on to the sandwiches.

Once this was done I popped some cling film over my casserole dish and went out dancing.

On my way back from dancing I called Paul and asked him to pre-heat the oven to 200c and the pop the bake in the oven for about 25 mins. The food wasn’t quite ready when I got home but it was nearly there!  After a little wait we were able to safely say it was quite nice.

 It wasn’t as nice as my Mum’s version I think that was due to my experimenting! Mine tasted very mustardy and felt a bit soggy to me but Paul loved it and there was none left on his plate so I must have done something right! We’re currently experimenting with lower fat meals so this won’t be on the menu for a bit but with some tweaking it maybe something to add to the repertoire....

52 Recipe Challenge - Week 42.

I had hoped to pop this recipe up about this time last week but I got sidetracked... you know what they say about the best laid plans! For this week's recipe I decided to try a savoury recipe inspired by watching The Hairy Bikers Bakathon and seeing them make this recipe made me think that's a good idea why haven't I thought of that before?  The recipe in question is Stromboli and I had to laugh, as when I was looking at the blogs I follow and finding that another blogger I read also posted a Stromboli post the day after I made this...  it's obviously a popular dish!

To make this you will need

450g/1lb strong white flour

1 x 7g/¾oz sachet of fast-action dried yeast

2 tsp salt

4 tbsp olive oil

325ml/11fl oz warm water

1 small onion, finely chopped

2 cloves garlic

400g/14oz can chopped tomatoes

½ tsp dried oregano

1 tsp sugar

8 slices of prosciutto

125g/4½oz mozzarella cheese

A few Spinach leaves

I started by measuring out  the flour for dough and putting it into a bowl then adding the yeast, salt, olive oil and water.

Next I mixed the ingredients together before kneading them for five minutes then I covered the dough with some cling film and put it in a warm place to rise for an hour.

Whilst this was rising I started to sort out the sauce, the original recipe said to chop up the onion and fry it off in a pan and then add the other ingredients.  I decided that whilst this sounded like a good idea I realised that this take a bit longer than I planned so I chopped up the onion and put it in a bowl with the garlic, chopped tomatoes, oregano and sugar then put it in the microwave for a few minutes.

Once this was done the dough had also risen so I rolled the dough out and then put it on a baking sheet and covered it in tomato sauce.

I then put the mozzarella on top.

Before adding the prosciutto ham and a few leaves of spinach in place of the fresh basil in the original recipe because that's what was in my fridge...

then I rolled it all up tucking by tucking in the long edges and then rolling one short end towards the other. 

 After doing that I looked at the recipe again and realised that I should have put it in a tray with some baking paper on it so I transferred it to another baking tray.

Whilst transferring the Stromboli the dough started to weaken and rip and I think I may have rolled it out too thin... then again I probably didn't use enough flour either but needless to say holes appeared in it.  The original recipe said to let it rise again but the evening was getting on so I only let is rise a few minutes before putting it into the oven at 200c/gas mark 6 for 25 minutes.

It cooked well but alas it didn't look as nice as I wanted it to when I took it out of the oven and ended up tasting mainly like tomatoey bread.  My boyfriend didn't believe I put cheese in it, I guess that the dough absorbed his share whilst it was cooking!  This recipe also made a monstrous amount so I took some of it into to work for my lunch the next day.

This was a recipe really I wanted to taste good but sadly it didn't live up to my expectations, maybe I should have followed the original recipe more.  Then again maybe I should just try another Stromboli recipe in the future... still it was worth a try and definitely something to look back on for future reference.