Classic mushroom zapiekanka

Rough day. No point going into why. For breakfast I had the herring I made yesterday. It was definitely better than it was last night. Mind you, herring for breakfast isn’t an entirely brilliant idea. Especially with all that onion. You’ve been warned 😉 I also decided against cooking dinner because, frankly, I couldn’t be bothered to do much of anything today. Really not great. Happens sometimes. Just the Champions League match tonight, a FIFA tournament, then bed.

Back to my dinnerless day: I found some mushrooms in the fridge (seemingly quite by chance, though I then remembered that yes, I probably had bought them yesterday). And once I’d dredged up from the depths of my brain that they’d been in there a day, I decided this couldn’t go on. Leave a mushroom in the fridge too long and it starts crawling about like a slug. At that point it’s fit for the bin and precious little else. Brrr… Definitely a bad mushroom.

OK, there’s my first ingredient. But this isn’t supposed to be dinner. Hmm. I’ve got some bread from yesterday. Decision made: a classic mushroom zapiekanka, the Polish open-faced toastie. Just like the ones I used to eat at the neighbourhood “lunch bar” in the early nineties. And now you’re all getting excited about “luxury zapiekanki”. There was a spell in Kraków (just after I graduated, or possibly while I was still studying, but sociology’s a tough course so my memory’s hazy) when everyone went mad for the ones in Kazimierz. They were disgusting, with some rather baffling sauces. Of course what all those zapiekanki had in common was the roll, or rather the baguette. But the whole point is the mushrooms, surely, so my bread should do fine.

I admit I don’t often make mushroom zapiekanki. Apart from that “lunch bar”, what they bring to mind is seriously fast food. Bread, toppings, straight in the oven. In fact, my recipe for a super-quick zapiekanka that doesn’t even need cheese is already up on the site. This mushroom one isn’t like that, though. Why? Well, you’ve got to peel the mushrooms (oh, how I hate that, but the prospect of them turning into slugs spurred me on), then you still have to fry them (preferably without burning them). That’s 20 minutes gone just like that. Hence its absence from the “Quick dishes” category.

Speaking of the neighbourhood “lunch bar”, does anyone else remember those days? After school you’d go to one of those shacks that sold a bit of everything (yes, after school, because I never skipped class), and it wasn’t just for a zapiekanka or a hot dog (honestly, I preferred the hot dog. Meat always wins with me). You went to play on the arcade machine. Not one of those “low-payout” gambling machines that end up causing scandals, but the kind with shooting games. Remember? Those were the days. An awfully long time ago, sadly. Yeah… if I carry on in this vein I’ll soon be looking back over my entire life in these posts 😉 Let’s forget about the “lunch bar”.

At a glance:

Prep time: 25 minutes

Baking time: 7 minutes

Oven temperature: 200 degrees Celsius

Serves: 1 person

How many calories? This has plenty

Ingredients for an easy herring dish:

• Bread (I used a loaf because I didn’t have a roll. A baguette would be best)
• 8 medium button mushrooms
• mozzarella (I bought it already grated)
• half a medium onion
• olive oil
• butter
• chives
• ketchup
• ground black pepper
• salt
• hot paprika

The recipe (for the mushroom topping, really):

Sadly, peeling the mushrooms comes first. So I peeled them. This recipe’s a bit of a con, since everything’s so ridiculously easy once you’ve got that mushroom “filling” that I should probably call it a topping recipe rather than a zapiekanka recipe. But who needs a topping with nothing to put it on?

I chopped half an onion very finely and fried it in a few drops of olive oil, in a frying pan, OF CURSE (Ninka and I are fans of Agnieszka Tyszka’s “Zosia z ulicy Kociej”, a brilliant series of 4 children’s books. One of the characters is Zosia’s sister Mania. Mania is 3.5 years old and gets her words mixed up. Ninka’s favourite is the way she says “OF CURSE”. “Daddy, Daddy, please say ‘of curse’ the way Mania does!” 🙂 So of curse we’re doing this in a frying pan. Once the onion had started to turn translucent, I added the very finely chopped mushrooms (very finely). I fried them for a dozen or so minutes, stirring fairly often. You want them dark but not burnt, so keep the “flame” fairly low. Once they were done, I tipped them into a bowl and let them cool a little.

Meanwhile I got the bread ready and spread one side with a thin layer of butter. I piled a thick layer of fried mushrooms on top. Added salt (I hadn’t seasoned the mushrooms at all while frying them), pepper and paprika. I put a modest layer of grated mozzarella on top of the mushrooms (you can see how much in the photo). Into the oven, preheated to 200 degrees Celsius, for about 5–6 minutes. For the last minute I switched from the conventional setting (heat all round) to the grill (heat from above). That way the mozzarella browns beautifully. When they were done I drizzled them with ketchup and sprinkled chives over the top. Ready. Enjoy!