When my brother went off to the south of France for his year abroad, one of the first things he wanted to do was take a weekend jaunt to Monaco to visit Princess Grace.
He had no prior introduction to Her Serene Highness or any of her family, but I’m fairly certain he hoped the fact that, because they were both half Irish and had fathers from Philadelphia, he was practically a shoe-in for a dinner invitation. Or lunch at the very least.
But sadly, no invitation was ever extended and the houses of Grimaldi and Procopio never got to mingle.
On the 13th of September, 1982, Princess Grace suffered a stroke while driving her youngest daughter home from their family retreat at Roc Agel. The car veered off the road, down a mountainside, and into a florist's garden.
Princess Stephanie survived the crash, my brother's plan to meet her mother did not. When Princess Grace died on September 14, Doug cancelled his plans.
He never went to Monaco.
Her passing, however, became his hobby. He began collecting Princess Grace death memorabilia and sending it home to us in boxes-- magazine and news articles about the accident, postcards with her image on them, a record of her telling children’s stories in French. He was, to put it mildly, obsessed.
One of those boxes included a letter in which he took enough time out of his macabre fascination to mention the café sandwich in which he took solace: the croque madame. "It's a ham and cheese sandwich, but with an egg on top that looks like a woman's breast!" he wrote. He drew a small picture of it on the thin, blue aérogramme paper. I giggled at it, but I know he thought it was genius.
Not being especially interested in women's breasts or ovum-topped sandwiches, I opted instead to try my hand at making the eggless, more masculine version: the croque monsieur. It was tasty, but uninspiring-- a griddled-up ham and cheese sandwich, but made with Gruyère, which was much more expensive and harder to find than my usual American cheese. I had to beg my mother for it, noting successfully that a small block of cheese cost a lot less money than sending me to visit Doug in France.
From thousands of miles away, I tried to share in both my brother's love of French sandwiches and his deep sense of loss over an Oscar-winning princess, but my interest eventually waned. I moved onto other, more important things like misunderstanding Adam Ant lyrics and turning my hair orange with Sun In.
Eventually, my brother’s morbid monomania waned and by Christmas, he’d traded in his grief over never meeting Princess Grace for a living— therefore more attainable— celebrity to stalk: Pope John Paul II. He blew off the tiny Principality of Monaco for the even tinier sovereign state of The Vatican. I have the feeling he thought the less square acreage he had to cover in any country, the better the chance of meeting its head of state.
Like everything else in life, Monsieur Croque and his perky-breasted wife were abandoned and forgotten.
Then one afternoon many, many years later, I joined my friend Rebecca for lunch at a local French Brasserie here in San Francisco. When she ordered a croque madame, my brain immediately conjured an image of Princess Grace, which confused me for a second until I remembered why. When I think “Grace Kelly”, I think of Hitchcock and High Society. When I think “Grace of Monaco”, I think “ham and cheese on white with a fried egg on top”.
More specifically, I see in my mind that tiny drawing of a sandwich in among all that death memorabilia and think: Croaked Madame. I don’t think that’s what my brother intended, but somehow, I know he would approve.
And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Croque Madame
The key ingredient my brother forgot to mention when writing home about the croque madame is the Mornay sauce. If you’re not up on your sauces and think that since this sauce bears a French name it must be hard to make, you are very wrong.
And possibly a francophobe.
If I wrote instead "the sauce you make for macaroni and cheese" it would essentially be the same thing. Since Princess Grace straddled both the English and French-speaking worlds, you may call it what you like.
Makes: one sandwich
Ingredients:
• 2 thick slices of bread, preferably pain de mie/Pullman. If you can find neither, use a good quality white loaf. And you must cut off the crusts. Must.
• A whisper of Dijon mustard. Not traditional, but a nice touch.
• 2 slices of ham, cut into the same exact shape as the bread slices. We are going for neatness since we are eating this in honor of a dead princess.
• 1 egg gently cooked in butter until the white has set and the yolk is runny.
• Enough grated Gruyère cheese to cover the ham.
• 2 tablespoons of butter in which to griddle and brown the bread.
• As much Mornay sauce as you want.
For the Mornay Sauce:
• 1 1/2 tablespoons butter
• 1 1/2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1 cup of warm whole milk
• Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste (The classic recipe calls for white pepper, I think. I do not believe in white pepper.)
• Freshly grated nutmeg, also to taste (Nutmeg is not optional. Really.)
• 2 to 3 ounces of grated Gruyère or Comté cheese
Preparation:
1. To make the Mornay sauce, melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Add the flour and stir constantly until the mixture (roux) is a pale yellow froth. DO NOT BROWN. Slowly add milk and continue whisking until the sauce thickens and comes to a hearty bubble (2 to 3 minutes). Reduce heat to low, add salt, nutmeg, and pepper to taste. Let simmer for another 2 to 3 minutes.
Congratulations, you now have a Béchamel sauce.
2. Pull the saucepan off the heat and stir in Gruyère cheese with a spatula until thoroughly melted and incorporated into the sauce. You now have Mornay sauce. Bravo. Once you've finished congratulating yourself, put it aside and place a piece of plastic wrap directly on top of the sauce to prevent a skin from forming. Keep warm. There is enough sauce here for probably 4 sandwiches.
Fry the egg gently in butter until the white just sets. Reserve for later use.
3. In a pan large enough to accommodate your two slices of bread in side-by-side fashion, melt 2 tablespoons of butter over medium heat. Add bread slices and lightly brown their bottoms. Remove from pan and assemble the sandwich, spreading the tiniest (optional) amount of mustard on the bottom slice, then add your two precision-cut ham pieces on top and sprinkle just enough grated Gruyère to cover the ham. Return to the pan and place under your broiler until the cheese is melted.
4. Remove pan from broiler. Place second bread slice over the one laden with ham and cheese to for a true sandwich. Coat the top of the sandwich with warm Mornay sauce, letting it drip over the sides and return the pan under the broiler until the sauce bubbles and browns. The traditional way is to coat both sides of the bread in the sauce, sort of like making French toast. I think. Don’t quote me on it because I am hardly traditional and only vaguely French. I do it the way I do it because I sometimes cook as though my cardiologist is watching.
Gently place the egg on top of the sandwich, cover it with more Mornay sauce, and return sandwich to the broiler. When the sauce on top bubbles and browns, remove from the broiler. Watch it comme un faucon. You really don’t want to overcook the yolk. Unless you’re my friend Jay, who hates runny eggs.
5. Slide your croque madame onto a piece of your finest china, pop open a beer (but pour it into a glass, please), find out where To Catch a Thief is currently streaming, and fast forward to that scene in which Grace Kelly takes Cary Grant on a wild ride over the same stretch of road where she died 27 years later.
6. Better open another beer.
Croaked Madame omg 😂
A lost day on all fronts! Lol