Recipe
Focaccia with mortadella, stracchino, and tomato
Mortadella is the reason Americans say baloney, and the journey between those two words is a small tragedy.
The name probably comes from mortarium, the mortar in which the pork was pounded, though a competing theory prefers murtatum, meaning flavoured with myrtle berries, which is apparently what the Romans used before pepper became affordable. Either way it is Bolognese, it has been made there for centuries, and it is a genuinely serious product: pork ground to a paste, cubes of neck fat suspended evenly through it, black pepper, sometimes pistachios, and hours of slow steaming in an oven.
Italian emigrants took it to the United States, where the name Bologna was attached to a cheap industrial imitation, then flattened in pronunciation to baloney, and then adopted as a general synonym for nonsense. A thousand years of charcuterie ended up as a word meaning rubbish.
In Bologna the sandwich is simply mortadella in bread, frequently with nothing else at all. The version here adds stracchino, the soft, mild, faintly sour cow's cheese from Lombardy, and a tomato for acidity. The cheese is doing structural work as well as flavour: spread thickly against the focaccia, it stops the tomato getting anywhere near the crumb.
Buy the mortadella sliced thin and then fold each slice rather than laying it flat. Folded, it has volume and something to bite against. Laid flat, several slices compress into a single pink sheet and the whole sandwich feels thin and slightly sad.
Focaccia rather than a roll, because it is already oily, and oily bread holds out against a wet filling for hours longer than dry bread manages.
- Prep 10 min
- Serves 2
- Cost €€
Method
- 1
Slice the tomatoes, lay them on kitchen paper, salt them, and leave them 10 minutes. They will release a surprising amount of water that would otherwise end up in the bread.
10 min
- 2
Split the focaccia squares and spread the stracchino thickly over both cut faces, right to the edges.
3 min
- 3
Fold each slice of mortadella loosely in half or into quarters and pile it on, rather than laying the slices flat.
3 min
- 4
Pat the tomato slices dry, lay them over the mortadella, and grind over black pepper.
2 min
- 5
Add the rocket, close the sandwich, and press down gently with the flat of your hand.
1 min
- 6
Wrap tightly in greaseproof paper. If it is for the next day, leave the tomato and rocket out and carry them separately.
2 min
Variations
Mortadella with pistachios is better and loses the nut-free flag. Stracciatella or burrata instead of stracchino, if you are eating it within the hour. A smear of pesto, or a few pickled peppers for sharpness. Prosciutto cotto or porchetta in place of mortadella. Plain white focaccia is correct; anything with rosemary and potato on top competes with the filling rather than supporting it.