Vincent Price’s Croque Monsieur

How was your Valentine’s Day?  I was single for 8 years, so know full well, that it is perfectly lovely to spend it all by yourself.  Now that I have the fabulous Mr Rathbone by my side though, I do like to pull out all the stops. 

For breakfast I disappeared into the kitchen with strict instructions that he shouldn’t come in, and I made Vincent’s Croque Monsieur for us both.

I love Croque Monsieur, and these days I always get one as breakfast in bed on my birthday, but Vincent’s way of making it is a bit different to Mr R’s.  Basically the same ingredients, bread, butter, ham, cheese…  Here’s Mr R’s version – he always does stripes, I love it!

But Vincent suggests dipping the sandwich in beaten egg with a bit of milk added before frying it in butter.  YUM!  This results in a softer croque monsieur and very good it is too, but not as good as Mr R’s of course…

In the evening we made my all-time-number-one-favourite-non-film-star recipe.  I cannot recommend this highly enough – Valli Little’s Massaman Roast Chicken.

Oh my goodness me, it was so delicious.  The good thing about making this for two is that you have lots of chicken, potatoes and massaman gravy left to bung in the freezer to have as a curry with some rice at a later date.  Brilliant.

After dinner we watched Telstar, the film about legendary record producer Joe Meek.  I may have mentioned before that Mr R works in a second hand record shop and is an EXPERT on 50s and 60s music.  I always love it when I surprise him with my own musical knowledge.  Someone came up the stairs in the film, and I said: “Who’s this then?  Heinz?”

I was well pleased with myself – ha ha!