Most of us know Mary Berry from her days judging the Great British Bake Off, but the Cordon Bleu-trained chef is also pretty great at devising easy dinners and lunches too.
We’re already huge fans of her cheat’s lasagne and surprisingly easy upgraded cottage pie recipe, despite their unconventional ingredients.
So I was willing to hear her out when I read her croque monsieur (toasted cheese and ham sandwich) recipe involved a spice I’m more used to seeing in cakes.
Which is?
Mary Berry includes nutmeg in the “wonderfully naughty snack, brunch or lunch”.
More specifically, she adds it to the cheese sauce she places on top of the sandwich, which also contains flour, butter, hot milk and Gruyère cheese.
To make the main grilled sandwich, she places melted butter on one side of two slices of bread and mustard on the other sides.
She grills the bread, placing ham on the mustard-side-up slices, scattering half the cheese over the meat. This toasts in the oven.
While that’s cooking, she makes a roux from flour and butter, adding hot milk until it’s the right thickness.
Once that’s done, she adds the remaining Gruyère and nutmeg, whisks it until it’s smooth, and pours the cheese sauce over the toasted sarnie, letting it grill for five more minutes.
“Sit a fried egg on top of the sandwich and it becomes a croque madame,” she also suggested.
Italians have a strong tradition of using nutmeg in savoury dishes
If the spice’s inclusion seems a bit odd to you, at least you can rest assured Mary’s not alone.
Nutmeg has a long history in savoury Italian cuisine ― “I think of bechamel, I think of nutmeg,” New York-based Italian chef Silvia Barban of LaRina Pastificio previously shared with HuffPost UK.
So, it makes sense that the creamy sauce on top of Mary’s croque monsieur follows similar rules.
Who was I to doubt her, eh?