Canapes des Gourmets

Canapés des Gourmets (butter-fried cheese and bacon toasts) teach one true thing before you touch the pan: frying is the dish. The bread is not browned under a grill or dried in a toaster. It drinks a thin film of butter in the pan, turning crisp and golden while keeping enough tenderness to meet the fondue, a melted cheese preparation, and bacon without collapsing into crumbs.

The original entry assumed a saucier with fondue ready, a salamander for the bacon, and enough hands to fry and assemble by the tray. Although the brigade's stockpot never went cold, this canapé asks nothing from it. The entry gives no household proportions, so the honest home scale is twelve paired canapés for four, with a small Gruyère-and-cream fondue made when needed and the home broiler standing in for the salamander. The holding gear and extra hands were scaffolding and can go. Frying in real butter, coating every toast, pairing the pieces, and enclosing grilled bacon are the dish and must stay. One cook, one stove, one evening.

The critical moment is the fondue. Keep the heat low and stop as soon as the cheese becomes smooth enough to spread, because boiling makes it shed fat and tighten into strings. If it begins to split, pull it from the heat and stir in the reserved warm cream a teaspoon at a time. Ça se rattrape. Assemble while everything is warm, and serve before the butter-fried edges lose their crisp bite.