Napoli: A slice of …something

Napoli: A slice of …something

Outside the Naples train station, with just a little time left before we bulleted back to the Eternal City, I spotted this item in a baker’s display case, so I grabbed one to street grunt as we walked to the train.



My notes say the hand-written sign above this baked good indicated it was something like “Fetta di Tortone,” a slice of…something. “Tortone” does not seem to be in my Italian dictionary, and I don’t think the word was a misspelling of “torrone” (nougat). It’s possible it was a misspelling of some sort, however, which is a problem when trying to document unfamiliar foods; I remember when VI and I came upon “huanzontle” at Maxwell Street – on later forays to the market, I found the same item spelled “guantzonle” and “hunzontle.” I think “huantzontle” is correct, but it sounds like Nahuatl, so it likely follows some spelling rules unknown to most of the world (as luck would have it, it was a food I have never wanted to eat again, so the lack of knowledge here is not too painful).

I don’t know exactly what we had a slice of in Naples, but it was pretty good. Aside from the obvious egg, there were bits of bacon and boiled ham, and a thin white cheese (fontina?) all apparently scrolled up within the dough before baking. Like pizza, this is another excellent use of left-over bits and scraps you might have about the kitchen: just roll ‘em in dough and bake ‘em up.

I’m thinking of this food today because it reminds me a little of the Easter pies we used to make when I was a kid (in those pies, of course, the eggs were kept whole and were cooked right in the dough, which was not the case with my Neapolitan slice).

Hammond

Tortano, perhaps? The ones I've seen are shaped like a horseshoe or ring and then sliced. Close relative of the casatiello which has whole eggs.

This is the ancestor of the Egg McMuffin

Bill/SFNM

Bill/SFNM wrote:Tortano, perhaps? The ones I've seen are shaped like a horseshoe or ring and then sliced. Close relative of the casatiello which has whole eggs.

This is the ancestor of the Egg McMuffin

Bill/SFNM

Quite possibly Tortano -- the item I had seemed to have been cut from a ring-shape.

I should have asked for hash browns on the side.

Hi David,

Not a misspelling. The -one suffix is an augmentative -- in other words, 'a big [whatever]'. So you need to look up torta, which of course will be in your dictionary.

Here's another food example: polpette 'meatballs' polpettone 'meatloaf'.

buona pasqua,
Amata

Amata wrote:Hi David,

Not a misspelling. The -one suffix is an augmentative -- in other words, 'a big [whatever]'. So you need to look up torta, which of course will be in your dictionary.

Here's another food example: polpette 'meatballs' polpettone 'meatloaf'.

buona pasqua,
Amata

Ah, a big cake, gratzie. I should have figured that out.

Davide "Il Buffone" Hammond

Amata is right about tortone -- with such forms there very often aren't separate dictionary entries. You have to look up the base form.

I'm pretty sure that this is, however, a tortano, as Bill suggested. A tortano is one of the many savoury 'pies' that are produced in Campania and elsewhere in the Mezzogiorno, in this case usually with a basic bread dough and filled with hard-boiled eggs, bits of ham, salame, pieces of cheese (gruyere and or provolone) and some lardo. To my mind, the best tortano is the simplest one, the one made just with ciculi -- no other meat, no cheese, just the pork cracklings and attendant lard. Incidentally, among the very best tortani I've ever had (and someone once said, "and I've had them all over the world") were served up in a now defunct Neapolitan restaurant in Belleville, N.J. Absolutely sublime.

As I said the other day, the American 'stromboli' is derived from this type of savoury and stuffed or filled 'pie' or bread. And the name 'stromboli' in that application I have never come across in Campania or elsewhere in the South.

Antonius

Provolone may very well have been the cheese -- and there was also salame (thanks for reminding me).

Gruyere (or even fontina, for that matter) seems like it'd be an unexpected formaggio for this big cake/pie. Maybe not around Valle d'Aosta, but in Naples, I think it'd be provolone (though, honestly, I'm having a difficult time remembering exactly what I thought it tasted like at the time).

David Hammond wrote:Provolone may very well have been the cheese -- and there was also salame (thanks for reminding me).

Gruyere (or even fontina, for that matter) seems like it'd be an unexpected formaggio for this big cake/pie. Maybe not around Valle d'Aosta, but in Naples, I think it'd be provolone (though, honestly, I'm having a difficult time remembering exactly what I thought it tasted like at the time).

Well, there may not have been gruyere in this particular one but you're quite wrong to think it not a common ingredient in such pies in Naples. It is one of the preferred cheeses for such preparations and has been for quite some time. My grandmother and all the comadre used it too.

Neapolitan cuisine is far more complex than most people think.

Antonius