Croque Monsieur our way

My boyfriend and I haven't been that good at eating dinner together - with the both of us working in the restaurant business, him as the owner and working chef at two cafe's, me at first full time waitressing, then after I started studying, about once or twice a week (who am I kidding - more than that - too much, granted!)

Anyways, hopefully, that's going to change. M., the boyfriend, just said goodbye to the business, hoping to engage in a more 9-5-style of living, with actual sitting down with the loved ones for dinner. As it is, well... I'm still working, but that's only - ONLY! - because I haven't started school yet. For now, that means that the meal mostly shared together at our house is breakfast - brunch you should probably call it, considering it is very seldom eaten before 11 o'clock.

Because of that, we have a rather elaborate repetoire of brunch-dishes we do on a regular basis. Yes, scrambled eggs, fried eggs, soft-boiled eggs, omelets - name an egg-dish and I'm pretty sure we've tried it! We are big egg-fans, even considering the sad state of eggs in this country... Why can't we all have nice, fresh farm eggs like Jeanne? One of the not-so-eggy-things we enjoy every now and then is the Croque Monsieur, as pictured above. I'm a cheese-lover, but there always seem to be small stumps left in the cheese-box after a while, and they're perfect for stuffing between two slices of bread, fried and eaten - preferably with an egg on top, of course! ;-)

What we do is spread two slices of bread - one with ketchup, one with Dijon mustard - put thin slices of cheese, like Gruyere or whatever is lingering at the bottom of that box, but something that has a somewhat pronounced taste - on one of the slices, top with the other - then fry in (a ridicously large amount!) of butter. Okay, if you don't do it every day, then butter is alright! To save a bit on the calories I usually just fry the croques till nice brown and crusty, then finish the cheese-melting part in the oven.

You can add ham, tomatoes, ketchup - eat with fried bacon on top, fried egg, scrambled egg - we usually do a tomato salad with a nice vinegary (sherry or balsamic) dressing to eat with it - admittedly, I do need something to lighten it! Serve with coffee, tea, OJ - and, erhm... need I say more?