For this dinner, I decorated the table with fancy name cards.....
and pictures from my visit to Paris WAAAAY back in 2005.
In preparing for this dinner, we hit a few bumps in the road with the recipes, surprisingly for the first time. Did you know it's nearly IMPOSSIBLE to find Marzipan in Nowheresville, Illinois? And to make it was going to be more expensive than I wanted..so I had to do some improvising.
Also the cheese I was supposed to use for the main dish was nearly $10 for a small container. Geez, France! You're fancier than I can afford!
Anyways, the main dish of the night:
Croque Monsieur
Ingredients:
2 tablespoons butter Gruyere cheese
3 tablespoons flour 1/2 cup grated Parmesan
2 cups hot milk White sandwich bread, crusts removed
1 teaspoon kosher salt Baked ham, sliced but not paper-thin
1/2 teaspoon pepper
Pinch of nutmeg
Directions:
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees
- Melt the butter over low heat in a small saucepan and add the flour. Stir with spoon. Slowly pour in the milk and cook, whisking constantly until the sauce has thickened a little bit. Remove from heat and add salt, pepper, nutmeg, 1/2 cup grated Gruyere cheese, and the Parmesan. Set aside. **I used a little more than 1/4 cup of the Gruyere cheese, not a whole 1/2 cup, same with the Parmesan***
- Cut the crusts off of the sandwich bread. To toast the bread, place the slices on a baking sheet and bake for 5 minutes. Turn each slice and bake for another two minutes until toasted.
- Lightly brush half of the toasted bread with mustard, add a slice of ham to each and sprinkle with Gruyere cheese. Top with another piece of toasted bread. Slather the tops with the cheese sauce, and bake a few more minutes.
So, I tasted this cheese when I was grating it...and I got scared because it had such a strong flavor and I had never cooked with OR tasted it before, so I made some sandwiches that were just toasted ham and cheese and served both.
For dessert, I was going to make Apple Marzipan but....as I already said, I couldn't find Marzipan and didn't want to buy the ingredients to make my own. So, we settled for Apple pie instead.
No real recipe for this, I just peeled and cut apples, sprinkled about a 1/2 cup of brown sugar on top of them, sprinkled about..1 teaspoon of cinnamon over that and about 1/4 teaspoon of allspice. I used a store-bought crust and threw that on top and baked it. Really basic, really delicious.
Now for the fun part. Since Paris is known for its fashion, I decided to do our goofy activity based on that. I saved all our junk mail from the last two weeks and tonight, we had a design your own fashion competition.
Each team got:
- a roll of painters tape I found in the basement
- a pair of scissors
- choice of materials from the junk mail pile
(Cat not included)
Noah set his phone to go off in 5 minutes, and we went to work.
5 minutes later, this was the result. We might not be quite ready for the Parisian runway, but in the end, I feel like we all won.
I had a few setbacks putting this one together, (not being able to find all the ingredients for the recipes I wanted to use, life weighing down a little heavier than usual, and re-scheduling two different times) BUT, I was pleasantly surprised with the way the Croque Monsieur turned out. The cheese I tried alone, cooked into to the sandwich and was actually pretty good when mixed with other flavors. (Don't eat it by itself though!) Turns out I could have just made all of the sandwiches with the cheese sauce on it instead of serving both like I did. I'll have to search around a little more in the future and if I can find some Marzipan, I'll try making the recipe I found for Apple Marzipan some other time.
I actually have no idea what the next country will be. So far in this adventure, I've had an idea in the back of my mind by the time I finish the current country- what country will come next. I'm open to literally anything, so if you've got a suggestion, let me know! I generally love being creative and I'd like to hear what some of you would like to see us eat.
*For the record: We have done Egypt, Germany, England, Russia, and now France.
I have also had Iceland, Italy, and Greece suggested so far (and I had already planned to do all three of those, at some point!)
The next dinner might not be for a few weeks, as our lives are going to pick back up and be constantly busy again once November hits, but I am having fun doing this so I intend to continue until it no longer becomes fun anymore.
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