Fall evenings with Gouda Grilled Cheese and Spicy Carrot Soup

It’s fall everywhere and it’s a beautiful time of year!

I love finally getting to wear my favorite fall jacket: a dark green corduroy blazer, with matching green leather gloves. It’s time for sweaters, boots and scarves. Fall means mornings with a slight misty chill that turn into sunny afternoons that are still nice enough to be outside for a walk or a coffee on a patio. It’s beautiful colours and smells and it’s time for warm, gooey, spicy comfort food: grilled cheese and spicy carrot soup!

Sizzling and simmering! My Mom made the Bon Appetit needlepoint.
It's perfect for a French kitchen!

A simple soup and sandwich night has been long overdue, especially after such a crazy/busy summer of traveling, moving and living out of suitcases. But no more of that! I have my own kitchen again and all the knives, gadgets and appliances I’ve missed since they were packed up and shipped out, so the time for a lovely comfort meal is here!

I could have gone the easy route with regular grilled cheese and tomato soup and although it’s tasty, we've been there, done that. I like this spicy soup as a beautiful and unique alternative to tomato soup, since it’s still fairly simple, but that also has a touch of the new and blog-worthy. A distinct soup needs a distinct sandwich, so this particular grilled cheese uses special Gouda seasoned with cumin. This soup and sandwich meal may be comfort food, but it’s definitely not ordinary.

Gorgeous fall-colored ingredients.

To make Spicy Carrot Soup, you will need: 

1 kg of carrots, peeled and chopped

1 red bell pepper, chopped

1 knob of ginger, around the size of your thumb, peeled and chopped

3-4 cloves of garlic, either minced or chopped

2 Tbsp olive oil

4 cups of vegetable broth or the equivalent in instant vegetable stock

Fresh ground black pepper, to taste

1 tsp* red pepper paste, found with Cajun/Creole ingredients (It won’t look like much, but trust me – it’s enough! You can add more but only if you want it really, really spicy! You can substitute the paste for red pepper flakes)

Blender method is worth a try.

Prep:

1-In your soup pot, sauté the ginger, garlic and red pepper paste/flakes in the olive oil for a few minutes.

2-Add the carrots and red pepper and keep sautéing, until everything is slightly softened.

3-Add the broth.

4-Bring the soup to a boil, then simmer on low for around 20 minutes.

5-Carefully scoop out small portions to puree in a blender until the whole soup is pureed. Let simmer on low while you make the sandwiches.

6-Enjoy with a side of sandwich!

To make the Gouda Grilled Cheese, you will need:

-sliced sandwich bread, in this instance, I used a Boule, a type of French bread that’s round, like a ‘boule’

-slices of cumin-seasoned Gouda

-butter

Bread, Gouda and Butter.

Prep:

1-While the soup is simmering, heat some butter in your skillet and assemble the sandwiches.

2-Keep the heat on low and press the sandwiches into the skillet with your spatula.

3-Carefully flip each sandwich until the bread is grilled golden.

4-Remove from heat, slice and enjoy with a side of soup!

Zing! This is not a bland vegetable soup!

Its bright orange color might seem mellow and soothing but look out – the combination of ginger and red pepper paste makes this soup nice, hot and spicy! As I mentioned before, be careful with your quantities, unless of course, you like it that hot. A generous dollop of sour cream or Greek yogurt also adds a cooling sensation, without taking away from the overall taste. All spiciness aside, this is one of my favorite soups because it’s so flavorful and simple to make. Plus, it’s ridiculously healthy! This was the first time I used the blender method, as opposed to an immersion blender, and although slightly less convenient, it worked out just fine.  

As for the sandwich, I really liked the cumin in the Gouda and I’m glad I tried it for a new twist on an old classic. It adds a rustic, slightly smoky flavor to the sandwich. It was a nice, relaxed touch to a spicy and satisfying fall meal.

Gouda Grilled Cheese and Spicy Carrot Soup

For a meal that’s as healthy as it is hearty and warm, it’s hard to beat the soup and sandwich combo. Play with the flavor combinations to find one that’s comfort food without being boring. Then enjoy those chilly fall nights, listening to the wind while you’re curled up with your hot bowl of soup and gooey grilled cheese sandwich.

Bon appétit!

La Baguette de Notre Dame

Bonjour!

I moved to Paris, France two weeks ago and the first bite I took of that crusty, crunchy yet soft, so-fresh-it’s-still-warm baguette, I exclaimed:

“Yes, I think I can live here.”

I don’t even think I’d swallowed that first bite yet when I said that. I was jet-legged and fighting a cold I’d had since mid-July, but hell if I was going to let that hold me back from appreciating the wonder that is the French Baguette.

In Paris, you are rarely ever more than a block away from a boulangerie and the one French stereotype that actually has some truth to it is the French carry their baguettes everywhere. Seriously - by hand, poking out of the shopping bag or purse, stuffed into a bicycle basket – baguettes are everywhere! They are made so fresh and taste so good that they don’t last longer than a day, which is why the French carry them everywhere because they buy one every day.

Then, there are the French sandwiches! 

Beautiful French sandwiches at Sur le Pouce.

The most common sandwiches are a demi-baguette (half the length of a regular baguette) stuffed with the simplest of ingredients: some meat, some cheese, one or two vegetables and some butter. That’s it. I was surprised at the lack of condiments from the place that invented Dijon mustard but with such fresh bread as the heart of the sandwich, you really don’t need much else – just a place to relax and eat your sandwich.

Somewhere like the great Cathédrale de Notre Dame.

La Cathédrale de Notre Dame.

Following my exploration of Papier+, a pristine stationary shop on rue de Pont de Louis Philippe in Le Marais, I was getting hungry. I remembered a small snack/sandwich café near Notre Dame from another day of exploring and I realized I knew how to retrace my steps back to that place, so off I went! I hopped back on the metro at Saint-Paul, got off one stop later at L’Hotel de Ville and crossed the Pont d’Arcole towards Notre Dame. I found Sur le Pouce, the restaurant I noticed from the other day and admired the beautiful sandwiches at the street-side counter and I chose Jambon et Fromage. Then, with my sandwich tucked under my arm, I set off to find a place to sit near the cathedral.

Across the main square, I found my spot and perched myself on a cement corner near some bushes and munched away. Surrounded by tourists taking photos of themselves and the one of the most famous churches in the world, I was nearly flat on my stomach, trying to get the perfect shot of my sandwich nestled on the bushes with Notre Dame in the background.  I had to laugh out loud but I got some good photos for my efforts.

Money shot!

 Notre Dame is impressive from any angle but I love to admire it from the front. It’s so grand and majestic, it makes the swarms of people around it look small. My sandwich done, I headed back to the metro station but not before I bought some lemon sorbet from Sur le Pouce and ate it in front of L’Hotel de Ville. Yum!

Not a bad view of L'Hotel de Ville. 

Turns out eating lunch and desert in front of some amazing historic buildings makes for a pretty great day. 

Soon to be repeated, no doubt!

The Monte Cristo

Monte Cristo Sandwiches: a play on the Croque-Monsieur.

Sandwich Night is not a new concept in my house – it’s a fairly common occurrence, thanks to this blog. The type of sandwich obviously varies, depending on what ingredients are handy and how ambitious I feel.  Last night, ambition was high and so was the excitement level regarding our upcoming move to France. We were feeling French, so it felt like the right time to introduce ourselves to a new sandwich: The Monte Cristo.

The Monte Cristo traditionally is made with ham and cheese, coated in egg and fried. Sound a lot like French Toast, minus the ham and cheese? That’s because it’s also a spin-off of the French sandwich, the Croque-Monsieur, which will get its own post, naturellement.

I was intrigued by its origins, as I am with all the well-known sandwiches I make, so I did a little digging into its past. The Monte Cristo is believed to have been first served in Paris in 1910 and gained popularity when it was served at Disneyland restaurants in the mid-1960s. Apparently, it’s still on the menu at the Tahitian Terrace. It is not to be confused with The Count of Monte Cristo, an adventure novel from 1844 by Alexandre Dumas, unless you consider the joke that in France, this sandwich is served ‘with a vengeance’.

Ooh, la la!

To serve up your own Monte Cristo, you will need: 

-Sandwich bread, your choice (traditionally, it’s made with white bread, but I used a thick rye)

-Strong Cheddar cheese, sliced

-Turkey or Ham slices

Simple ingredients: eggs, milk, bread, mustard, cheese, meat.

-Whole grain Dijon Mustard

-2/3 cup of Milk

-3 Eggs

-1/4 tsp. each fresh Pepper and Thyme leaves

-Butter

-A hot skillet

Prep:

1-Spread a layer of mustard on half of the bread slices.

2-Top with cheese and turkey/ham slices and the other, non-mustard-ed bread slices.

3-In a mixing bowl, beat the eggs, milk, pepper and thyme together.

4-Carefully dip the sandwiches into the egg mixture to coat each side.

5-Melt the butter in the skillet and grill the sandwiches 3-4 minutes each side, until brown.

6-Serve hot, with ketchup, ranch dressing or jelly, as its traditionally served with, for a little extra something sweet.

Très bien!

This fancy French sandwich needs a knife and fork.

I really liked the different textures and flavours of this sandwich: the egg batter made the bread soft but also a bit crispy around the edges and the smoked turkey and strong cheddar complimented themselves well. And in my opinion, everything tastes better with Dijon mustard.

This is a knife-and-fork sandwich, since it’s best when it’s hot off the skillet and feels fancier eating this repas français with utensils. My only recommendation would be to layer the turkey/ham between two slices of cheese for maximum cohesion while grilling. The numerous cheese possibilities are also definitely worth playing with: Gruyere or Emmental would be the top two on my very long list….

Vengeance optional, but couldn’t hurt for authenticity’s sake.  Bon appétit!

For more information on the Monte Cristo, check out:

History of Monte Cristo Sandwich

The Count of Monte Cristo