Recipe
Piadina with prosciutto crudo, squacquerone, and rocket
Squacquerone is a cheese named more or less after the noise it makes, and it is the best word in Italian food.
It comes from the Romagnolo dialect verb squaquarè, meaning to be excessively soft, to collapse, to go everywhere at once. The cheese is precisely that: white, fresh, barely holding its own shape, somewhere between ricotta and a very young stracchino. It is made from cow's milk in a couple of days and eaten almost immediately. It has held protected designation status since 2012, and it does not travel well, which is the polite way of saying it is a cheese you have to go to Romagna for.
If you can find it, this is the sandwich to put it in, and it is the one Romagna considers correct: piadina, squacquerone, prosciutto crudo, rocket. Nothing else. No oil, no tomato, no ambition. The salt of the ham, the fat of the cheese, the pepperiness of the rocket and the warm flatbread underneath, and that is the entire construction.
If you cannot find it, stracchino is the nearest thing and is stocked far more widely. A soft goat's cheese or even a decent cream cheese will do the structural job. What you need is something that spreads and does not melt, because it is acting as glue and as waterproofing at the same time.
The assembly rule is the same as for every sandwich in this chapter: the fat-based layer goes against the bread and the wet things sit on top of it. Cheese, then ham, then rocket. The cheese seals the piadina and buys you a good five hours.
Four minutes, almost no cooking, and it costs less than a supermarket sandwich that will disappoint you.
- Prep 10 min
- Cook 5 min
- Serves 2
- Cost €€
Method
- 1
Warm each piadina for 30 to 40 seconds a side in a dry pan over medium-high heat, until it is flexible and has a few brown blisters. A cold piadina cracks along the fold; a warm one does not.
4 min
- 2
Let them cool for a minute. Spreading cheese onto a hot piadina melts it into the bread and you lose the waterproof layer that makes this work.
2 min
- 3
Spread the squacquerone over the whole surface of each, right to the edges.
2 min
- 4
Drape the prosciutto over one half, folding the slices rather than laying them flat, so the sandwich has some volume to it.
2 min
- 5
Pile the rocket on, grind over black pepper, and fold in half.
1 min
- 6
Wrap tightly in greaseproof paper and cut through the paper. If it is for later, keep the rocket in a separate twist and add it at the desk.
2 min
Variations
The other Romagnolo classics: squacquerone with fig jam, or with grilled courgette. Bresaola or speck instead of prosciutto. Mozzarella and tomato works but must be drained hard. A handful of grilled peppers from a jar. If you cannot find piadine, a large flour tortilla is a poor but functional substitute; a pitta is better. Do not use a crusty roll, which defeats the whole design.