Fruitful Fall Recipe: Apple, Gruyere, and Pork Pressed Sandwich with Grilled Onions

Strawberry-black pepper granita, spicy roast chicken with rhubarb chutney, scallop and blueberry ceviche, grilled peach, shrimp, and prosciutto skewers. Are you drooling yet? These are just a few of the recipes in Fruitful, a cookbook dedicated to using fruit in sweet and savory recipes during every season. Co-owner Brian Nicholson and acclaimed cook book writer, Sarah Huck came together to create Fruitful as a way to show how to use fruit as more than just a sweet ingredient. You can find Fruitful on our online store, on Amazon, or in our farm store.

To celebrate fall, we've picked one of our favorite autumn recipes from Fruitful to share. Featuring fall's finest apples, the Apple, Gruyere, and Pork Pressed Sandwich with Grilled Onions is sure to satisfy both your sweet and savory taste buds.

Ingredients:

• 1 small red onion, peeled and sliced into 1/4-inch/ 6 mm rings
• 1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh sage
• 2 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil
• Pinch of fine sea salt
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 1/4 cup/60 ml mayonnaise
• 2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
  4 slices (1/2-inch/1.3 cm-thick) slices country-style bread
• 10 ounces/285 g leftover roast pork, thinly sliced
• 1 large tart apple, such as Granny Smith, quartered, cored, and thinly sliced
• 2 ounces/60 g Gruyere cheese, grated (1/2 cup)

Directions:

Toss the onion slices with the sage, the oil, the salt, and pepper to taste. Heat a cast-iron grill pan over high heat. Grill the onions until tender, about 10 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat, let the onions cool, and chop them coarsely. In a medium bowl, combine the chopped onion with the mayonnaise and mustard. Wipe out the grill pan.

Spread one side of each slice of bread with the onion mixture. Layer pork and apples on half of the the onion-covered slices. Sprinkle with cheese and top with the remaining bread slices. Drizzle the tops and bottoms of the sandwiches with olive oil.

Return the grill pan to medium heat. Cook the sandwiches, pressing down occasionally with a spatula, until the bread is crisp and the cheese is melted, 2 to 3 minutes per side. Serve immediately.