Today we’re going to be talking about French comfort foods, which are one of my favorite kinds of easy comfort foods. I’m going to do a series with a different cuisine each time. We’ll cover Italian comfort food, Mexican comfort food, et cetera, but this one is definitely my favorite because the French just have a way with food.
We’ll be talking about Croque Monsieur, French toast, and a few other things that you can make easily, and that’ll fill that hungry gap in the winter or anytime you need some comfort food. French comfort foods are things that don’t really need the fancy chef techniques; things that you can make easily. They don’t have fancy ingredients, and they don’t take a lot of time. They’re indulgent, homey, and yummy.
The first one, of course, is Croque Monsieur or Croque Madame. There’s a slight difference between the two. Croque monsieur is a warm ham and cheese sandwich that’s baked or pan fried with bechamel sauce on top. Croque Madame is the same, just with a fried egg on the top. Often these sandwiches have an authentic cheese like Gruyère or Emmentale to give them that extra edge of flavor. You can add interesting things to the bechamel as well, but the basic Croque Monsieur is a fabulous comfort food.
So, let’s talk about how to make it. First, you want to make the bechamel sauce, and have that ready. In a small saucepan, you can melt some butter, add some flour, and whisk it for about a minute. This is called a roux, and you want to balance the amount of butter with the amount of flour so that it’s not too thick. It should almost be like a dough, but not quite. It should stay runny, and you need to let it bubble a little bit so that it cooks the flour – it shouldn’t have a floury taste.
I’ll add the recipe below with the exact amounts of each thing, but you just use equivalent amounts of butter and flour, like one tablespoon of each. Then you need half a cup of milk. These amounts are for a small portion – if you make it for a family, it’ll need to be a lot bigger. Slowly add the milk and whisk it in, and the roux will slowly thicken as the milk warms. Just cook it for a couple of minutes, and keep stirring it until it’s a good thickness – not too thick, but just how you like it.
Then you can season it with salt, pepper, and sometimes a bit of nutmeg. You can add sage leaves to give it flavor. I also like to add a little bit of grated Parmesan cheese and whisk that in, though it should just be a tiny bit, as this sauce is not supposed to be a cheese sauce, but it gives it a nice cheesy flavor. Then you remove it from the heat. It should be creamy, but not too runny. Your bechamel sauce really needs to have good flavor, so if it’s not quite there, add a little bit more salt until you’re happy with it.
Then secondly, you need to assemble the sandwiches. Lightly toast some slices of bread, spread a little Dijon mustard and some butter on one side of each slice, and then put ham and a handful of cheese between the slices. It’s best when you combine cheeses, so use a little Emmental, a little cheddar, a little jack cheese or Edom, a little Gruyère for a stronger flavor – find a combination that you enjoy. Don’t forget to add a little bit of salt with the cheese – it really lifts the flavor.
When you’ve made the sandwiches, stack them on an oven tray or in a pan, spoon a little bechamel sauce on the top, and sprinkle a little cheese on top of the sauce. Then put the baking tray in the oven, and bake the sandwiches at 200 degrees Celsius, 400 Fahrenheit, for about 10 minutes; until the top is bubbly and golden. If you didn’t toast the bread, you could bake the sandwiches without the bechamel, and then add it afterwards, but it’s much easier to toast the bread, assemble the sandwiches, and then bake them.
You can serve these with a green salad or pickles. You can add a fried or poached egg to the top with the yolk dripping down the sides if you like the Croque Madame.
Here’s another French comfort food which is really easy. You don’t even need to cook for it; you just need a French bakery nearby, or even your local grocery store; somewhere that has good croissants. Get some croissants, some ham, and some cheese slices. Again, cheese like Emmental works great. Then simply make croissant sandwiches for your dinner using the ham and cheese.
Alternatively, if you prefer, you can bake some chicken breasts and make chicken mayo or chicken salad with a bit of celery and mayonnaise mixed into the shredded chicken. Put that on the croissant, and that’s wonderful for dinner.
Then you could have a second croissant for dessert. Slice it or pull it in half, and put some whipped butter and honey on your plate. Spread a bit of butter on the croissant where you ripped it, dip it in the honey, and take a good bite. Then you can spread a little more butter on, add a little more honey, and take another bite as you go. What a wonderful comfort food for dinner!
French toast is actually from ancient Rome, not France, so I don’t why it’s called French toast, but it’s fabulous, so let’s include it here. You need to crack a few eggs into a flat dish, and add a bit of milk and seasoning. I like to add three eggs at a time with some milk or crème fraîche, which is also delicious, and some salt and maybe pepper. Whisk the egg up, and dip the bread in it. First soak one side, and then turn it over and soak the other side. Then lift it up, let it drip a bit, and place it into a hot pan.
It’s pretty important to turn it over quite soon so that it doesn’t stick, and so that the egg doesn’t all go to one side. Put it in for a minute, then flip it over and leave it for a while. Maybe add a little more salt if necessary. Then when it’s well cooked, flip it again and cook the other side properly. When it’s golden and crispy, you can take it out. Some people like to add maple syrup, some people like to add mayonnaise, and you can even put another egg on top if it’s for breakfast. It also works great as a quick healthy dinner.
Quiche is another wonderful French comfort food. You can make a crustless quiche if you want, because a crust can often take more time to make, and it sometimes contains gluten that you don’t want if you’re gluten free. Choose if you want a crustless quiche or not – it really doesn’t make that much difference. I find crustless quiches completely delicious, and I don’t even miss the crust.
Add some steamed vegetables to a quiche dish and then make your pour-over. There’s a great recipe for this in our Family Food for Moms recipe book, which is called Elegant Easy Appetizers. You can use zucchini, broccoli, butternut, or any kind of vegetables you like. Steam them until they’re soft, and then put them in the bottom of the quiche dish with a little bit of salt.
Then make an egg mixture in a blender. You can add some eggs, milk, feta cheese, some seasoning, and even a bit of cheddar cheese. Blend that up, pour it over the vegetables, and then bake it until it’s set.
Alternatively, you can do the same thing in muffin trays. Add some steamed vegetables into each muffin cup, and perhaps a little bit of bacon that you pull apart, and then pour your egg mixture over those and make mini quiches or egg cups.
Another fabulous comfort food, although it’s more of a side dish, is gratin dauphinoise; thinly sliced potatoes that you bake in cream with milk, garlic, and some seasoning like nutmeg. This is a very delicious dish. I find that it takes longer to cook than you realize, but it’s so creamy and soft, and it goes great with any main course. You can look up a recipe for that.
Then there’s French onion soup. Let caramelized onions simmer in beef broth, and then you top it with a toasted baguette and some melted cheese. This is definitely comfort in a bowl. It’s amazing! I found it worked really well to make it in the Instant Pot. That made the onion more tender, and the dish was quicker to make. So, look up a recipe for French onion soup in the Instant Pot.
There’s also ratatouille. This one has vegetables in a tomato base – an amazing mix of vegetables; eggplant, zucchini, red pepper, tomato and herbs. It works great with rice and any kind of meat dish, so look up a recipe for ratatouille.
Here’s another easy comfort food with French Camembert cheese. This is so easy to make. Take a piece of Camembert – usually it’s a round – and add some strawberry or raspberry jam on top, and maybe even a few crumbled pecans. Then bake it in the oven until the cheese is melted and the jam is melting over the top. It’s amazing!
You can take toast, maybe Melba toast, or any kind of bread, and spread the cheese on it. You can even use crackers, and enjoy the camembert as an appetizer or as part of your main course.
Of course, you can have a French baguette and cheeseboard if you don’t really want to cook. That’s a delicious way to have a comfortable dinner. Grab a French baguette and slice it. Get some amazingly well-made salted butter. Cut some French cheeses like Brie, Camembert, cream cheese, and any other cheeses that you’ve got. You add some crackers and some fruit, like grapes, figs, or whatever you enjoy. Just make up a charcuterie board, mainly using French bread and French cheese. Then everybody can dig in and help themselves.
Another easy dinner that’s a French comfort food is crepes. French crepes are like thin pancakes that you roll up with a filling inside. They’re really easy to make – it’s basically flour, milk, a bit of egg, and a couple other ingredients. You can search for a recipe for French crepes. You fry them in a pan, making them very flat. Take a scoop of the liquid, which is much runnier than normal pancake batter, and then swirl it around the pan. It should be a very thin layer all over the bottom of the pan. Then flip it, and there you have your crepes.
Once you’ve got a stack of crepes, everybody can grab some. You can have some savory and some sweet fillings. We sometimes like to have chicken mayo or tuna mayo inside some of the crepes, and we’ll add a bit of cheddar cheese to those. Then for the sweet version, we’d do some cinnamon sugar and a little maple syrup. You can have crepes as both your main course and your dessert, and everybody loves them. It’s a real comfort food,
You have to make quite a few. Sometimes we’ll double the batter for our family of seven, and sometimes we’ll use spelt flour because some of us are wheat free. Once you’ve got the batter, let it rest a little bit and then start making the crepes. You can have a couple of pans and a couple of people at the stove, and it’s a fun social event as you make the pancakes and eat them with some delicious fillings.
So, there are some ideas of easy things that you can make inspired by French cuisine. I hope you get to try some of them. I think we’re going to try the crepes very soon.
