The mother of all sandwiches…

Whew. This is a biiiiig sandwich.  It’s not a towering monster like some that I’ve seen, but it will certainly fill you up.

It’s based on a torta (Mexican sandwich) that Thomasina Miers made on her cookery show (recipe here). I’ve been eyeing up this recipe for a long while and finally got round to making it today. Thomasina’s recipe calls for chorizo, so I substituted halloumi cheese. If you’ve never tried this before, you should! It’s a salty Greek cheese which holds its shape when grilled or fried. Halloumi is easy to get hold of and makes a fantastic vegetarian option, especially at barbeques – take note please carnivores :).

I used my favourite focaccia recipe for the buns, then got cracking on making some refried beans. I added a little smoked paprika to mine to give them a little bit more punch – a lot of recipes call for lard or bacon fat (which I won’t use, of course) and smoked paprika seems to round out the flavours.

Once I’d prepared my beans, it was time to fry the halloumi and toast the buns, then gather the rest of my ingredients together and get ready to assemble. The layers were as follows:

1. Refried beans

2. Griddled halloumi

3. Avocado

4. Fresh tomato salsa (tomato, red onion, lime juice and coriander)

5. Little gem lettuce…

… and it should look a little something like this!

Now the challenge is to get your mouth round it – no point in trying to be ladylike here 🙂

~ by smileysoyabean on 4 July 2012.