Alright, here we go with our croak monsieur, my favorite open face sandwich. And I have that cheesy béchamel left over. So here’s what I’m going to do with it. I’m going to take a leaven bread. This is just a classic French country loaf of bread, the round oval kind. Round oval, I guess, it’s going to be one or the other. I guess it’s round. So we’re going to cut nice big thick slices right out of the center. So we’re not going to use the two end pieces. Alright.
Now, important, since we’re going to throw this in the oven, they can be the same thickness, otherwise, you know, one is going to cook faster than the others. Those are good three quarters of an inch thick. I’m going to drizzle about, I don’t know, tablespoon of olive oil on one side. I’m going to flip them over. Alright. So there’s olive oil on the bottom. I’m going to take my cheesy béchamel sauce. Now, if you don’t know where I got that or how that came to be. You’ve got to watch two clips on the site, the béchamel clip and then the beginning of the cheese soufflé clip where I added the cheese. So basically a cheese infused ice beer. Cheese infused thyme scented béchamel. And I’m putting a nice thick coating on each of these slices. So that’s about half a cup of béchamel, I want to spread it between four. So if my math serves me correctly, this is an eight of a cup. Now here’s an important tip here, go all the way to the edges of the bread. Because it’s going to go in a hot oven and we don’t want the edges to burn. So if it’s covered all the way to the edge with the béchamel, you don’t have to worry about that. Alright, so make sure you get full coverage.
Now, what you top this with is up to you. I mean, that’s kind of obvious, right. What I’m going to use is the traditional or one of the traditional combos here. This is some nice smoky black forest ham. I’m going to do maybe three or four thin slices per. Just like pizza, you don’t want too much topping. If you get too much topping it’s just, it’s too much. Less is more. So a few slices of smoky ham, it’s traditional.
Alright, on top of that I’m going to use a nice bright tomato. And if you can't find a bright tomato, don’t even bother. Okay, don’t put some pink melee supermarket tomato on there. To I’m going to put a couple of slices on each. Alright, and I didn’t show it, I want to save time. I did a little salt and pepper on the tomato. And then I’m going to top it with a couple of tablespoons of grated melty cheese. Now what will work here any kind of swiss, cheddar. I actually use fontina, one of my favorite cheeses, I had some in the fridge. So again, you don’t want so much that it just turns into big giant blob of cheese. So a couple of tablespoons of cheese is plenty. Monterey jack would work great here, pepper jack. Alright. If you can eat cheese this is not the best demo to be watching. Sorry about that. But if you do, there is nothing better. Alright, to top it off, I’m going to take some hard grated cheese. Peccherino, romano would work, this is a regiano parmesan. So just a little sprinkle, this is going to help with the color. It’s also going to give it just a little extra layer of flavor. So I just put maybe a half a teaspoon regiano on each. And then just to finish this off, a real light drizzle of the extra virgin olive oil. Maybe a half a teaspoon and those are ready for a hot oven. So I bake this at 400 till they were done. Now, how long did they take? They took about 15-20 minutes. Alright, but you got to check them. What you want is beautiful golden brown on the top. In the bottom, because we have a little olive oil on the pan, the bottom is just crispy a little bit. So you know, every 15 minutes, check it. Look underneath. But that’s what it suppose to look like when it’s done. And that is a beautiful, beautiful open face sandwich. Again, you cut into that, there’s a little creamy layer that tie and infused cheese béchamel underneath your ham, your cheese, your tomato. These are great with asparagus. I seen it done with broccoli, I mean, you can top it off with anything. But this is really nice lunch. Great picnic item. And one last tip, these are much better room temperature than they are hot out of the oven. First of all you’ll burn the heck out of your mouth and you just can't taste all the different flavors. So let this cool down to room temperature. Just warm and then I think you got something. Anyway, give this a try, and enjoy.
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