Kids Make Croque Monsieur

Unbearable deliciousness of croque monsieur

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow cook

The French sure no how to gussy up a ham and cheese sandwich. It's called "Croque Monsieur," and if you were looking for the perfect late-night cafe food in Paris, this would be it.

Between these two slices of bread is a slice of ham and a heap of Gruyere cheese. But that's hardly what makes this sandwich special. The French, being in love with sauces, smother it with a Bechamel sauce also fortified with Gruyere and some Parmesan for good measure. The sandwich is then baked in the oven till the cheese melts, then broiled until the Bechamel is bubbling and beginning to brown.

The kids in my food appreciation classes were wild for it.

Perhaps the most important decision in making Croque Monsieur is which bread to use. I spent a good bit of time in the bread aisle considering my choices, and finally settled on a white bread from a local company that slices it more on the thick side. The bread itself is firm, not squishy.

To make four sandwiches, toast the bread by laying eight slices on a sheet pan and placing them in a 400 degree oven. When the tops begin to brown, flip the bread and continue toasting for another minute or two.

Spread Dijon mustard on four pieces of bread and on the other four lay a slice of ham--not too thin, not too thick. Sprinkle a generous amount of grated Gruyere cheese over the ham (you'll need a total of 2 cups for this recipe). Place the bread smeared with mustard over the ham and cheese.

Slathering Bechamel on top of the sandwich

Now for the sauce. Melt 2 tablespoons butter in a saucepan over moderate heat and whisk in 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour. When the flour begins to bubble, whisk frequently and cook a minute or two. Slowly add 1 1/2 cups warm milk, whisking continuously. As the sauce heats, it will thicken. The sauce should be rather thick, but not pasty. Add more milk if necessary.

Off the heat, stir into the sauce 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, pinch nutmeg, 1/4 cup grated Gruyere cheese and 1/4 cup grated Parmesan. Slather the sauce over the tops of the sandwiches, then place in a 400-degree oven for six minutes. Turn on the broiler and monitor closely. Remove the sandwiches when the sauce is bubbling vigorously and just beginning to brown.

You'll probably want to allow the sandwiches to cool a bit before serving. They can be sliced in half, or even into quarters.

What's for Lunch: Cheeseburger or Ham & Cheese?

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

You definitely needed two packets of ketchup for this lunch--one for the burger and one for the potato wedges. Most of the kids dove straight into the potatoes. They're not fries, exactly, but they look enough like fries to make them irresistible.

Wouldn't you know it, the USDA is proposing to tightly restrict fries and all other kinds of potatoes in school meals, as well as other "starchy vegetables" such as corn, peas and lima beans. Instead, schools would have to serve bigger portions of green and orange vegetables. In other words, the governments wants schools to serve more foods that kids don't like, and cut back on the food kids really love.

This is the formula for making school food healthier. The question is how we go about convincing kids they should eat it. I really wanted to taste the burger, but by the time the last kid had gone through the food line all the burgers were gone. Here's was was left: the alternated ham and cheese sandwich.

In fact, it was pretty good, the ham being "turkey ham" spread on toasted whole wheat bread. Okay, it was a little stale. But still....Carrots sticks with ranch dressing came on the side, and the lunch ladies tossed in some potato wedges to finish things off.

What's for Lunch: Turkey Sandwich

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

People wonder why schools go to all the trouble trying to make a different hot lunch every day. Can't kids just eat sandwiches? Peanut butter and jelly put me through school for years.

Well, this is a blast from the past: a turkey sandwich on "whole wheat" bread. But this was an alternate selection to the hot entree, which was chicken.

The alternates--a different one for each day of the week--are often quite tempting. You just don't see kids choosing them much, except on this particular day when they seemed to like the looks of this sandwich. At the Chartwell's menu website, it was advertised as a "turkey and cheese whole wheat wrap." I'm guessing they ran out of the whole wheat flour tortillas the kitchen normally uses to make those wraps.

And just in case there might be any shortage of carbs on this tray, one of the side dishes is a big scoop of rice. Looks like some broccoli in another corner.




Here's what the sandwich look like after it emerged from the plastic. I would have made mine slathered with mayonnaise. Still, it looks good enough to eat.

Cheese Sandwich Strategies

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

I'm always captivated by the different ingenious approaches kids routinely take toward the food their served in school. Some things, for instance, simply do not lend themselves to being eaten by a plastic spork. Other foods inspire the most creative improvisation, sometimes involving a complete deconstruction of what the menu writer and kitchen cooks intended.

In this case we have what Chartwells at its menu webiste called "whole wheat toasted cheese triangles, tomato dipping sauce, seasoned fresh vegetable medley with locally grown zucchini, chilled pineapple cup."

Is a cheese sandwich by any other name still a cheese sandwich? Basically, this is two slices of whole wheat bread warmed in the oven with grated mozzarella cheese.


Some of the kids took this as a challenge. As you see here, one girl who described the bread as "nasty" pulled the sandwich apart and dove for the cheese. I watched this become quite a project as the girl attempted to separate the melted cheese as much as possible from the bread, to which it was determined to adhere.

But she was largely successful. And here's where the "tomato dipping sauce" entered the picture for her. She dipped the cheese in it. Perhaps this was vaguely reminiscent of pizza for her.

And here's one fifth-grade boy's solution. He opened the sandwich and spread the tomato sauce over the cheese. Suddenly, things are beginning to look a whole lot more like pizza.

And in case you're wondering, the vegetables were fresh and delicious. Unfortunately, kids don't go for vegetables much. Some were picking at the zucchini, while others bargained with their table mates for the broccoli. Still, it sure beats the cooked-to-death broccoli we've seen in the past.

What's for Breakfast: Bagel Egg and Cheese

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

The grated cheddar cheese on this egg sandwich doesn't look particularly appealing after it's been in the oven.



But I wanted to draw your attention to the egg. In the past, the schools have used a processed, frozen egg patty from a factory for this. But this egg patty was made from scratch in the school kitchen, poured into a stainless pain, cooked and then cut into rounds.

We are seeing much more food like that this year, since the D.C. schools revamped their menu--more thought put into the food, more things cooked from scratch.

What's for Breakfast: Egg Sandwich

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

Chartwells on its menu website called for a "toasty egg patty sandwich with cheddar on a whole wheat bagel." This certainly comes close, although the bagel looks more like an English mufin. The egg patties and muffins would have arrived frozen, but I have not seen the ingredients or cooking instructions for these items. Chartwells also called for an apple to accompnay the sandwich, but at my daughter's school they served a peach.


Here's another view of the sandwich.

And here's how one girl was eating eat. I asked her if it was good, and she nodded her head vigorously. I guess that constitutes a thumbs up. Or even two thumbs up.

What's for lunch: Meatball Sandwich

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

Chartwells, the company contracted to provide meal services to District of Columbia schools, advertised this lunch on its published menu as "meatball sandwich." Here's what it looked like close up.

Getting at the meatballs was a little awkward, sandwiched as they were between two slices of bread. What some of the kids did was open the sandwich and eat the meatballs with their fingers. Kids seem to consider all kinds of foods finger-adapted in an elementary school cafeteria. Some of them ate the bread, others didn't. If you look closely, you can see that this girl removed the crust and left it behind on the Styrofoam tray.

I can't tell if the mixed vegetables were frozen, or out of a can.

This particular girl had started the meal with a lollipop she brought from home.



I thought it was worth showing different views of the sandwich. I usually encourage the kids at my daughter's lunch table to take the photos themselves. You can see from one photo to the next how their food selections vary. There's a strawberry milk on this one.

But not every kid took the vegetables. Here you see chocolate milk and the advertised fruit selection, "chilled pineapple" in a plastic cup.

After most of the kids had gone through the food line, the sandwiches switched from these to meatballs on a hot dog bun. Those also had cheese melted on them. The sauce on the meatballs smelled strongly of barbecue, but we couldn't tell for sure. Some kids thought it was regular tomato sauce, others voted for barbecue sauce.

Either way, the meatballs are made at the factory usually from U.S. donated commodity beef, then shipped frozen. I'll see if I can't track down the ingredients for the sauce.

What's for Lunch: Rib Sandwich or Chef's Salad?

The menu for D.C. schools posted by Chartwells-Thompson calls this a "BBQ beef riblet." It may look like ribs, but I guarantee its never been near an actual beef rib. And cattle don't have "riblets." They have Fred Flinstone-size ribs. So this is something that's been re-constituted and shaped to look like ribs, just like the phony grill marks the food processors put on the "beef teriyaki bites."

The menu also called for fresh baby carrots. The 10-year-old who took this meal might have simply declined the carrots. I didn't see any on any of the kids trays. (Hardly surprising, since the kids don't like them.) Between the beef, the bun and the beans (also a vegetable), this qualifies as a complete meal.

The alternate was this gorgeous chef's salad. This got me thinking that maybe the food services administration has beefed up the staff at my daughter's school in response to all the blogging I've been doing about the meals served there. Salad is often an alternate, but you don't see them putting on the nine's like this very often.

It's true the meat is all processed government turkey, even the stuff that looks like ham. And the lettuce is the usual iceberg, most likely from California. Still, it looks great. The one drawback was an absence of dressing for the salad. I asked the boy to whom this lunch belonged if there weren't any dressing for it and he said, "I didn't see any."

Score lots of style points for this effort.

What for Lunch: Turkey Sandwich, Chips from Home

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

This looks a lot like the lunches I ate when I was a kid. I'm pretty sure I always brought a brown bag lunch from home with some kind of sandwich. Except I don't think we had "turkey ham" in those days, made out of turkey thighs "chunked and formed." And a plastic cup with mayo?

The kids are probably more likely to eat the carrots in this plastic bag than the steamed carrots they are often served. (Did you know that these are not actually "baby" carrots, but regular carrots that are industrially "sanded" to make them look junior-size?)

This was the alternative: spaghetti with meat sauce. I believe these are the famous "beef crumbles," made with government commodity beef and soy protein by a company in Cincinnati. They arrive frozen and are poured into a steamer to reheat, then sauced. The spaghetti also is cooked in a pan in the steamer, proving that you don't actually need a stove to make school food.

And this is what one fourth-grade girl brought from home to eat with her lunch. In some public schools, this would not be allowed. Junk food is confiscated.

Today's Lunch

Have you ever seen a cheese sandwich served in a plastic pouch?

That was one of the main entrees when I visited my daughter's school, H.D. Cooke Elementary, for lunch the other day. The sandwich, identified on the packaging as "Hot from the Grill," was heated while still in the plastic, then displayed for the kids on the steam table.

Unfortunately, there was nothing on the package to indicate ingredients. A second entree choice was chili over rice. I'm just guessing, but since I spent a week in the H.D. Cooke kitchen, I have a pretty good idea how things work. The chili was probably made with USDA commodity beef mixed with soy protein and prepared by a distant processor, then shipped to the school frozen. Beef like this typically is reheated in a steamer, then it could be mixed with kidney beans out of a can and some form of dried chili seasoning.

Most of the kids also had on their Styrofoam trays an 8-ounce (1 cup) container of milk--usually chocolate or strawberry--and a Granny Smith apple. One thing conspicuously missing from the trays was any form of vegetable. Turns out steamed carrots were being offered, but none of the kids were taking.

"We don't like the carrots," my daughter explained. "They taste yucky."

Under USDA "offered versus served" rules, kids need only take three items from what's being offered to qualify as a federally-subsidized meal. Most likely, those unserved, uneaten carrots will simply go down the kitchen's commercial garbage disposal.

I also wonder about little kids being served great, big Granny Smith apples. Most of them won't finish the apple. It just goes into the trash. What about cutting the apples into wedges, mixing them with a little lemon juice to prevent browning, and serving them in smaller portions? There is a kitchen tool that makes quick work of this and would save a lot on apples.