Lunch sandwich

I've mentioned before that I'm bad at eating lunch because I work from home and tend to forget about it. I'm trying to get better though, and this was today's meal. I used to make this a lot before we went to Hong Kong but since we came back to Sweden I guess I've forgotten about it, until today. It's one of those things for which there is really no recipe, but I'll tell you how I went about it.



Mushroom-apple cheese melt sandwich

Put the oven to 175°C. Take a rather large piece of bread, today I used a darker sort of mini baguette which I sliced in two. Heat some oil or butter in a pan. While the butter melts, take a handful of mushrooms and quarter them. Also take a small apple and dice that, you want dice about the same size as you mushroom quarters. If you want to you could chop up an onion finely too, I didn't today. Toss the mushrooms and apples (and onion) in the pan and fry until the mushrooms are going soft. Season with salt, pepper and some paprika powder (it goes well with the mushrooms). Then add a couple of hefty tablespoons of crème fraiche. Now in Sweden there are all kinds of flavoured crème fraiche varieties. The one I used today is flavoured with porcini mushrooms (accounting for like 5% of the volume of crème fraiche, but hey, it's something, and it was actual dried porcinis, not artificial flavouring), thyme and lemon. I've used other varieties of flavoured crème fraiche before, like French herbs, mustard/tarragon, or even chili/paprika (then I usually toss some spicy sausage in as well), and you can use plain crème fraiche too, but then you probably want to add some more spices. Anyway, a couple of tablespoons of crème fraiche goes into the pan; stir around so that it melts a bit. Then you just transfer the mushroom-apple sauce on to the bread slices, that you have placed on some sort of oven proof dish. I prefer a snug fitting pan, cause then it's easy to scoop up any sauce that falls off the bread. Finally, grate some cheese on top. I prefer a flavourful cheese, like cheddar. Today I used parmesan because that's what was in the fridge. Mozarella would work too. Put in the oven for about 10 minutes, until the cheese are melting and getting a golden colour. Since we had fresh thyme at home (thyme is my favourite herb) I topped the sandwich with a couple of sprigs before eating. Happy lunch!