Focaccia con le Olive
Focaccia with olives pressed in; Taggiasca olives common.
Focaccia with olives pressed in; Taggiasca olives common.
Focaccia with onions baked on top; sweet, caramelized.
Focaccia col formaggio is a Ligurian cheese flatbread, and the name does two jobs: a cheese-topped risen slab almost anywhere, and Recco's paper-thin two-sheet build the EU fenced off in 2015.
Bari builds its focaccia on boiled potato worked into durum semolina, a crumb that drinks oil and tomato juice without giving way, topped with whole olives and oregano.
Bari's thick potato-crumbed focaccia, baked with crushed cherry tomatoes and olives, split horizontally and filled with mortadella. The bread is already seasoned, so the fill stays light.
Grilled bread rubbed with garlic, drizzled with olive oil, topped with prosciutto; open-faced.
Chickpea flour flatbread (farinata) in a roll; similar to Sicilian panelle but different texture.
Savory pie with Swiss chard, spinach, Parmigiano-Reggiano, and lard; eaten like a sandwich when folded.
Paper cone filled with fried foods (zeppole, arancini, frittatine, crocchè); street food, sometimes eaten sandwich-style.
Toasted bread with chicken liver pâté (fegatini); not quite a sandwich but iconic Tuscan bread preparation.
Crostino al tartufo is warm toast under the thinnest layer of black-truffle crema, butter and fungus worked smooth. An Umbrian open-face toast using the smallest amount of truffle that still reads.
Flaky, layered flatbread cooked on testo; filled with prosciutto, greens, sausage.
Crescia with sausage and spinach.
Crescia with prosciutto and arugula.
A palm-sized leavened disc baked between chestnut-earth moulds, split warm and dressed by hand with cunza, lard pounded with garlic and rosemary, across a long Modenese table.
Rocket is the anti-tomato on a Milanese cutlet: bitter and bone-dry where tomato is wet, it lifts the fried crumb without softening the snap. The cotoletta panino with the soggy ending designed out.
A cold Milanese veal cutlet under fresh drained tomato: the crust fried in butter, the juice held off it, a summer panino where the whole craft is keeping the shatter dry long enough to bite.
Sicily's dressed bread, the cunzato, is cucina povera at its barest: warm bread flooded with oil, oregano, and salt, all a poor kitchen had. On a ciabatta, what you add on top is a map of the island.
Ciabatta with grilled vegetables.
Ciabatta with roast beef.
The borlengo is batter swirled across a hot copper sole until it sets crisp as a wafer, brushed with cunza, lard pounded with garlic and rosemary, and folded in the hand in the Modenese hills.
A Sunday roast rebuilt to carry: one Yorkshire pudding baked wide and flat, folded around sliced beef, roast potatoes, stuffing, greens, and gravy, and eaten standing at a market stall.
Tortilla wrap with various fillings; very common.
Cheesy Wotsits (cheese puffs) on bread; messy but beloved.