Panino con Sfilatino
Sandwich on sfilatino (thin baguette-style).
Sandwich on sfilatino (thin baguette-style).
The rosetta is a five-petalled Roman roll baked nearly hollow, a brittle shell around an empty chamber. The sandwich is mostly air, loaded light and eaten before the crust gives in.
Pane casereccio is the country loaf the sandwich answers to, a rustic bread whose dark crust braces a single cured filling. Its Genzano version was Europe's first protected bread, in 1997.
Cheese and egg 'meatballs' (no meat) in tomato sauce on bread; cucina povera classic.
Sandwich on pagnotta (round loaf).
Olive ascolane (large stuffed olives, breaded and fried—meat, Parmigiano, nutmeg filling) in bread; Ascoli's famous snack.
Milanese meatballs (made from leftover boiled meat, mortadella, bread, Parmigiano) on bread.
Hollow, crusty Milanese roll (michetta/rosetta) filled with various ingredients; the roll's air pocket holds fillings.
Sandwich on mantovana (crusty bread with 'ears').
Sandwich on filone (long loaf).
Milan's breaded-cutlet panino has one problem: the fried shell that makes it worth eating starts softening the moment it leaves the pan. Timing is the whole craft.
Breaded veal cutlet on bread; can be bone-in or boneless, sometimes with arugula.
Sandwich on coppia ferrarese IGP (twisted, crunchy bread); unique shape.
Sandwich on ciriola (short Roman baguette).
Sandwich on ciabatta bread (crisp crust, open crumb, olive oil); invented 1982 in Veneto.
Horse meat (grilled or raw) on bread; Catania specialty.
Sandwich on biova (soft, white Piedmontese roll).
Generic Catanese sandwich; often featuring local sausage or horse meat.
The Calabrian panino is built on 'nduja, a fiery spreadable pork paste worked onto warm bread on the back of a knife, often beside a coin of soppressata piccante. The roll has to be warm to work.
Generic Bolognese sandwich; often mortadella or other local salumi.
Thick slices of ventricina del Vastese, the coarse, chilli-red, fennel-spiced mountain salume of Abruzzo, on dense country bread with nothing added: a sandwich that wins by subtraction.
Michetta con cotoletta sets two Milanese icons in one hand: a butter-fried veal cutlet inside the hollow, star-pleated michetta roll, eaten fast while both shells still crack.
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.