Croque monsieur: our grilled cheese sandwich

I follow a number of food blogs and what struck me most this month are the numerous grilled cheese recipes. I gathered that April being the national grilled cheese month is huge in blog space. Now, as a citizen of Belgium, I cannot participate in it nor share this 'national'/American month dedicated to the love for cheesy sandwiches. 

thinly pressed croque monsieur, a salad (must)
and some curry ketchup

But that doesn't mean we don't know anything about grilled cheese at all. We in Belgium, however, do have our own terminology for these kind of sandwiches. They are all French in origin and even though most of us speak Dutch in Flanders, no one bothers to translate the terms. They are concepts. (In the Netherlands they call these tostis, they do translate the term as you see)
A few examples of classics in the grilled cheese category are:
- croque monsieur: a sandwich filled with cheese and cooked ham 
- croque madame: a sandwich filled with cheese and cooked ham with an egg (sunny side up) on top after toasting
- croque hawaï: a sandwich filled with cheese and cooked ham with in the middle a slice of pineapple
Sometimes we also add a pinch of cayenne or chili in between the slices of bread. To add a little kick and especially with the croque hawaï this is highly recommended!
And to serve we take some tomato ketchup or mayonaise (or a combination of the two: cocktail sauce) and a salad as a side. Great meal!
All of these are then toasted in a frying pan with some butter or a croque monsieur machine (my preferred method because lots less greasy!). In the machine, you can make the washing up also a lot easier by placing some parchment paper between the machine and the sandwich. The paper will prevent the cheese from burning onto the machine and the clean up no work at all.

The cheese is the commonly found cheese variety like Gouda (this is a Dutch type of cheese and is pronounced  with an 'OU' like in MOUSE, just saying dear English natives!) but this really is according to everyone's taste.
The bread most people use is white bread. Some use special toast bread (pre-packed rectangular loaves) but the best way is of course some good bread from the bakery. Whole wheat bread is not often used as it's not the classic way and it just gives another end result, a different taste. My way to make things a little healthier is taking some slices of a light version of whole wheat bread (half whole wheat). Dark brown varieties of bread definitely aren't favorites around here for grilling ...

You see they are all very basic. Of course we also eat other fillings but we tend to stick to our old time favourites. Talking about our family: when we think about using pesto, vegetables or different kinds of meat on a sandwich, we don't often use normal sliced bread. Because of the richer fillings, we make the whole thing more stylish by using at least a French loaf, a ciabatta or another kind of more elegant bread. For more unusual fillings we go for the more unusual breads as well. 

The logic behind this is that croques in general are very common basic ways to use up some bread. Ham and cheese are also things we as a bread-loving people, always have in the fridge. We don't see grilled cheese as special dish, just another way of eating our slices of bread (as we eat bread for breakfast and for lunch every day). Something hot as lunch is a good alternative from time to time. 
Other fillings are not always common cupboard/fridge items, we need to buy them specially and if we do this, we can just as well buy an specialty bread.  

I saw a few very tasty things the last few weeks. Grilled cheese month is being celebrated all around and these are some I would love to try: 

Roasted red pepper, aragula and mozzarella sandwich from Two Peas and Their Pod, with a salad of aragula, tomatoes and pine nuts, this would be wonderful. 

Goat cheese, kalamata olive tapenade and grilled pepper panini by Pinch of Yum, as a lover of goat cheese it is looking delicious!

Grilled chicken and roasted red pepper sandwich from Pioneer Woman, I wouldn't make this with as much butter but the combination of flavour attracts me

Fig, brie and apple grilled cheese, also from Two Peas and Their Pod, I think many would like this with a salad and some crushed walnuts. 

Smakelijk! 

Tofu-corn shoarma wrap

I made a tofu-corn shoarma recipe on Wednesday and I had some of the tofu left over. With it I made a very tasty wrap:

me eating the wrap

The wrap was filled with the following ingredients:
- grated beetroot

- grated carrot
- grated cabbage
- roasted red bell pepper
- tofu-corn shoarma  (recipe in previous post)
- my home made cucumber-yogurt sauce (recipe in previous post)

It was delicious and very easy and very Summery.

Smakelijk!

Home made fast food: veggie pita-shoarma

Summer is here! We had to wait for it a little longer than last year but finally we reached 25°C and could have our dinner in the garden. This is the start of the best time of year and what's better to do this than have an informal dinner with friends?

Here at home, we are no lovers of take-away. Apart from fried foods which I do not like myself in particular, I love all of the fast food kind of things. We regularly eat pizza, shoarma stuffed pita bread, chips, noodles, hamburgers... but we always make them ourselves.
(Apart from the occasional time we get home late and are too tired to cook and only feel like walking around the block to go get pita-shoarma)

Today we made pita-shoarma. Most of the time, we buy the breads, the meat and the vegetables we like and put everthing on the table for everyone to stuff his or her own pita. Today, however, I decided it was time to make an alternative to the meat version of pita shoarma. Of course we had falafel lots of times and it's delicious but extending the horizon is always good!

Making a veggie alternative of shoarma might be tricky because my dad is a very dedicated meat-lover. He doesn't even try veggie dishes and only eats vegetables when they're covered in white sauce, cheese or lots of butter. Vegetables to him are just for dressing up the plates.
The plan was to still have meat for dad and offer the others - we were the 8 of us, my family and friends - two other options: falafel and tofu-corn shoarma. We could try what would taste good and there was still some meat in case it was a fail. 

I took some inspiration from the Pioneer Woman who posted a recipe for vegetarian lettuce wraps (www.thepioneerwoman.com). She used tofu. I was interested in the idea of using tofu as well. It's very neutral of taste on it's own so it would be good to spice it up for the pitas. I made the recipe my own and posted it below. 

I must say I liked it a lot and I didn't miss the meat at all. I served it with a tzatziki-like sauce I made just before serving as I realised it would need some sauce. Even one of the friends who was at first not at all interested in veggie things and only wanted to stuff his bread with meat, tried it in the end and took some more!
Even though I prepared the tofu before and heated the skillet just before eating, the result wasn't at all dry. It was juicy, spicy, delicious!

I didn't take a picture of a stuffed pita so this is just some 

tofu-corn shoarma with grilled bell pepper

To make it just as I did, just follow the directions below:

Ingredients for the tofu-corn shoarma:
- neutral oil for the skillet
- 200 grams of tofu in small cubes
- 1 small can (140 grams) of sweet corn (drained)
- 1 table spoon of shoarma seasoning of your choice
- a small dash of balsamic vinegar
- a bit of chilli powder to spice it up
Ingredients for the tzatziki sauce:
- 150 grams Greek yoghurt
- 1/2 teaspoon of sugar
- salt and pepper to taste
- 6 cm of cucumber in very small cubes (I cut the piece of cucumber in 6 slices, cut strips from the slices and cut them in small cubes)

How to:
Heat the oil in the skillet and once it's heated, add the cubes of tofu. With a fork, break the cubes into even smaller pieces until it looks like minced meat. After a minute or two, add the drained sweet corn and let it simmer along with the tofu. Once the tofu and the corn are a little browned, add all the seasonings and the balsamic vinegar. 
For the sauce, just mix all the ingredients together and set aside, easy peasy.
Serve with the tzatiziki sauce, cubes of roasted sweet bell pepper, lettuce, grated beetroots and carrots, tomatoes and basically anything you might like on a pita bread. 

This is enough to fill about 4 to 5 small-sized pita breads. 

Smakelijk is all I can say!