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The Sandwich 100 · make it at home

The cheese toastie (Kappacasein style)

15 min · 2 toasties

London's market toastie: three cheeses and sweet, soft onion and leek pressed into sourdough until the cheese leaks out and fries crisp at the edges. The same pressed-sandwich idea runs from Montreal's Wilensky Special to New Orleans' collard green melt.

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The real one

You need

• 4 slices sourdough, about 1.5 cm (1/2 in) thick
• 100 g (1 cup) grated mature cheddar (Montgomery if you can find it)
• 60 g (2/3 cup) grated Comté or Gruyère
• 60 g (2/3 cup) grated Ogleshield, raclette or another good melting cheese
• 1 small leek, white part, thinly sliced
• 1/2 small white onion, thinly sliced
• 1 small clove garlic, finely chopped
• 2 tbsp butter, plus soft butter for the bread

How to make it

1. Soften the alliums (8 min): Melt 1 tbsp butter and cook the leek, onion and garlic with a pinch of salt over medium-low heat until soft and sweet but not brown, 8 minutes. Cool a little.
2. Mix the cheese (1 min): Toss the three cheeses together.
3. Build (2 min): Butter the outside of each slice. On 2 slices (butter side down) pile half the cheese, the leeks and onions, then the rest of the cheese, letting some spill to the edges. Close.
4. Press and cook (6 min): Cook in a heavy skillet over medium heat with another heavy pan pressing on top, 3 minutes a side, until deep golden and the cheese has run out and crisped against the pan. (A sandwich press works too.)
5. Rest 1 minute, cut in half and eat while it's still stretching.

Tips

• The leaked, fried cheese at the edges (the 'frico') is the best part; let it happen.
• Montreal variation: grilled beef salami and bologna with mustard on a pressed roll, no cheese at all.

Chef Amazing's own home version, in our words; not any shop's recipe.