Panino con Carne di Cavallo
Horse meat (grilled or raw) on bread; Catania specialty.
Horse meat (grilled or raw) on bread; Catania specialty.
A whole globe artichoke braised soft with wild Roman mint, sliced and laid between bread. Not the fried alla giudia: the romana goes in wet, herb-soaked, and tender to the core.
A whole artichoke pressed open and fried twice until the leaves go to glass and the heart stays tender, then raced into bread before the crisp fades. The Roman Jewish quarter's signature, in a loaf.
Genoa's grandest fast-day dish is a tiered seafood-and-vegetable pyramid bound in anchovy green sauce, built over a day for Christmas Eve. The panino folds that architecture flat and walks it.
Caponata, the rested Sicilian relish of fried eggplant in sweet-sour agrodolce with capers, olives, and celery, spooned into a crusted roll. A finished dish before it ever meets bread.
Capocollo toscano on saltless pane sciocco: the cured pork neck seasoned the Tuscan way, with fennel, pepper, garlic and a wash of Chianti, sweet and anise-scented rather than hot.
A slice of Norcia's cured pork neck on a plain unsalted loaf, from the Italian town whose name for its butchers became Italy's word for a butcher everywhere.
Capocollo di Martina Franca is pork neck washed in cooked grape must and smoked over fragno, a near-endemic Puglian oak: sweet against woodsmoke, aged in the trulli, sliced onto Altamura bread.
One whole muscle of pork neck, salted, pressed, wine-washed, and rubbed with Calabrian chilli, then hung a hundred days and sliced thin onto a plain roll: a sandwich built around a single cured cut.
Capocollo di Calabria DOP on a plain southern roll: chilli and red pepper rubbed into the whole pork neck before curing, so the heat rides in the soft fat from the inside out.
Canestrato Pugliese is a hard whole-sheep's-milk cheese ridged by the reed basket it ages in, broken into shards on a durum loaf. PDO since 1996, born on the Abruzzo-to-Puglia drove roads.
A Tyrolean bread dumpling, sliced and tucked into a roll: the panino con canederli puts cooked bread inside raw bread, the frugal Alpine answer to the week's stale loaf.
Cacioricotta is made twice in one pot, scalded near boiling like ricotta then rennet-set like a cacio, so it dries firm and crumbly rather than spoonable. The southern Italian crumbling-cheese roll.
Caciocavallo is a gourd-shaped cheese tied at the neck to hang and age. Hang it over embers and its melting face ropes onto bread: caciocavallo impiccato, a sandwich of a wheel, a fire, and a slice.
Caciocavallo Silano DOP (stretched-curd cheese from the Sila plateau); aged, sharp.
Caciocavallo Podolico is the cheese of a half-wild grey cow that gives ten litres a day for a few spring months: a rare, herb-soaked, long-aged wheel the panino guards rather than dresses.
A panino con burrata is built around a filling that wants to escape: a mozzarella pouch of cream-loosened curd that spills when cut, caught by a roll firm enough to hold it.
Cool Pugliese burrata torn over a roll, salt-deep prosciutto crudo folded against it: a gourmet-counter sandwich whose whole effect lives in the gap between fresh and cured.
Brovada is white turnip soured for weeks under the spent skins of black grapes, then shredded against warm Friulian snout-sausage so the pork reads clean. The acid carries the panino.
A single lean muscle from the cow's back leg, salted, spiced, and dried in the cold air above Sondrio until it turns deep garnet, then shaved thin into bread with oil and lemon.
No wheel of Bra is made in Bra: the Roero town ripened and sold a cheese the Cuneo mountains produced. The panino turns on Bra tenera, soft and young, or Bra duro, hard, aged, and set against cugnà .
The panino con bottarga turns cured fish roe into a sandwich by treating it as a seasoning: grey-mullet bottarga shaved to translucent slivers over oil and bread, a little carrying a long way.
The Sardinian two-ingredient panino: cold butter spread thick on a plain country loaf, with bottarga di muggine shaved fine over it. The butter is the design.
Bombette (pork bundles stuffed with cheese, sometimes capocollo) grilled, on bread; Cisternino's specialty.