What could be more simple than a panino? Take some bread and butter, slice it through the middle and fill it. Seen in this way, the sandwich is almost an “anti-cuisine”, a nomadic short-cut that allows for speed and little thought.
But when Alessandro Frassica thinks about his pan’ino, he considers it in a different way, not as a short
Alessandro searches for ingredients, raw foods and there he finds people: producers of pecorino cheese from Benevento, anchovies from Cetara, ‘nduja spicy salami from Calabria... Then, he studies the combinations, the consistencies and the temperature, because a pan’ino is not just a random object; savoury must be complemented by sweet; tapenade softens and provides moisture; bread should be warmed but not dried; thus the sandwich becomes a simple way of saying many excellent things; including finding a complexity of flavours that can thrill in just one
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