A Strange Panino

Salty-Sweet Panino

With summer in full swing, our friends’ garden is bursting with flavors – golden tart apples, plump plums, and fleshy figs. With a basketful of the exotic, sweet fichi in the house, Francesca proposed a lunch of “pizza con fichi e prosciutto”. Okaaay, pizza with figs sounded a little odd to me, but I’m willing to try anything once. What she meant was pizza bianca, plain already-baked pizza – what we would call focaccia in the US- split open to form a panino with the fillings. She peeled and sliced up the figs and smashed them onto the bread, then layered the very thinly-sliced prosciutto on top and closed the sandwich up. We munched away and the result was a salty-sweet concoction, not unlike prosciutto and melon but on a bun, so to speak. A true Mediterranean lunch ready in minutes; oh the simplicity of Italy!