Sompanelli - mystery solved, here's the recipe

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di reston

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Calosso, Piemonte
I was intrigued when, some time ago I read a post about Sompanelli. I was advised to give up as the mystery had'nt been solved, but by then I had decided to try to trace it anyway in my capacity as a linguist. There were a couple of clues - one, the city of Modena, and two, indicators as to how this mysterious snack was made. There was also a line leading nowhere.

I contacted my friends on the Italian cookery newsgroup that I also subscribe to. They were mystified as well, until up came the name 'borlenghe', and then 'zampanelle'. While the two words were different, but, from my experience of 2nd generation expat Italians, I knew that 'Sompanelli' must be an Americanisation of 'Zampanelle', and I knew I was on the right track. Although the American description of the recipe was sketchy, the descriptions matched, and I knew we had hit the jackpot. (I love doing this kind of thing).

Here's the recipe:
For the pancakes:

1kg '00' type flour, 1 whole egg, and salt in the bowl.
light olive oil, and water.

Make the batter combining the above ingredients to give a light batter of a consistency to make a thin batter (like French pancakes). Put the flour, the beaten egg, the salt into a bowl. Add the water bit by bit, to get a light batter which on cooking will be almost transparent. The consistency should be glue-like.

The flavourings:
Peel 2 large cloves of garlic, add a palm full of finely chopped rosemary needles, or use dried rosemary powder, and mix the two to a paste.
Weigh out 250 g of pork belly and mince fine, then add to the rosemary and garlic mix. This is called Pesto alla Modenese.

Cooking the pancakes:

Use a heavy base pancake pan to cook your pancakes. Cook them very thin, almost transparent, then turn and cook the other side, which will take seconds rather than minutes in order to achieve a pliable very thin pancake.

When the pancakes are ready, put them on a hot plate and spread the Pesto Modenese over. The heat of the plate should be sufficient to melt the fats in the Pesto Modenese.

Sprinkle with the Grana Padana cheese, fold into four, and ENJOY.

N.B. Kids in Italy like their Zampanelle with Nutella. Can you imagine that!!

It's amazing how you can find things out just by studying words - but, then, I've always been a wordsmith, more than anything else.

Regards to you all

di reston

Enough is never as good as a feast Oscar Wilde
 
Good post and interesting.
I've never seen pork belly in my stores, can bacon be used, will it melt also with that short warming?
 
blissful, pancetta would be a better substitute. The smokiness of bacon would add a strong flavor the original dish did not have.

Pretty cool sleuthing, di :cool: It might be a good idea to add a link from the other thread to this one, so anyone who comes across it in a search would know that one of our members found the answer :)
 
No reason why you shouldn't use bacon, so long as it's fatty, the streaky stuff from the pork belly. The fat is the important thing, and it (in theory) should be chopped so fine that it looks like a lump of lard, however I see no reason why you shouldn't put it through a very fine mincer. The main thing is, it should melt on contact with the pan. Have a look at these items on YouTube:

Borlenghi a Guiglio (Guiglio is a small town not far from Modena)

La Zampanella

you can see how it's done there.

It comes under the category of Street Food, and appears at all the Saint's day fairs in the region, where, by tradition and throughout the whole of Italy and mostly through the winter months, Fairs are held, particularly on 2nd November. That's the biggest, held with fairgrounds all over Italy, the regional street food speciality dish featuring large. There are market stalls selling almost everything you can imagine, including food, clothes, kitchen equipment, local and regional fairgound foods as well as the ones known and loved nationwide, like arancini and supplì. These fairs are held just before Advent, which is a period - 1 month - of prayer and fasting, before Christmas.

di reston

Enough is never as good as a feast Oscar Wilde
 
I found a few youtubes on it. On one they melted the 'lard' along with the rosemary and garlic, all finely chopped, and sprinkled the liquid over the finished crispy sompanelli.
On the other one, the fat belly (or substitute) was all finely ground into a paste and the paste was a greenish color. About a tablespoon or teaspoon of it was spread with two forks to cover about 1/3 of the sompanelli.
Then in both cases, the cheese was lightly sprinkled on them, then they were folded in quarters.

Looks like a delicious crispy crackerish, thin as a thin potato chip, crisp, flavored and folded in 4. A nice snack. Thanks.
 
The correct name of this snack is 'zampanella', or 'borlengo'. 'Sompanello' is an Americanised version of it, based how 'zampanella' sounds to the ear in the USA, Britain, and other English speaking countries.

di reston

Enough is never as good as a feast Oscar Wilde
 
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