Where our prosciutto comes from

The meat on a sando is the part nobody asks about. We think about it more than anything else on the menu.

Ours comes through Bottega 1995. Italian food importers on King William Road, Goodwood, twenty minutes from both shops. They bring it in from Italy and we buy it from them. Here’s what, and why we don’t get it anywhere else.

Two things with paperwork

Start with the prosciutto. Cavazzuti Prosciutto di Parma, aged sixteen months, PDO.

PDO stands for Protected Designation of Origin. It means the name is a legal one. It can only be made in one place, one way, by producers who let inspectors in. You cannot buy the name. You have to earn it and keep earning it.

Sixteen months is the other half. That is how long it hangs before anyone is allowed to slice it. Time is the ingredient. There is no shortcut and no version of this that arrives on Tuesday.

It goes on the Prosciutto Sando with fior di latte, pecorino, tomato, rocket and a balsamic glaze. The pecorino and the glaze are Bottega’s too.

The provolone in the Gabagool is the second one. Provolone Dolce Valpadana, also PDO. Dolce means the mild one, aged the short way, so it goes soft and buttery instead of sharp. Against the capocollo and the Calabrian chilli mayo, that is the point. Sharp on sharp is just loud.

Two protected-origin products in one deli case in Goodwood. That is not normal.

The tomato

On a Margherita there is nowhere to hide. Dough, cheese, tomato. Get the tomato wrong and the whole thing is wrong.

Ours is O Sole e Napule “Il Firmato” polpa. Polpa is crushed tomato, not whole peeled and not passata. Somewhere in between, and the texture is why. It sits on the base instead of sliding off it, and it holds together under ninety seconds of wood fire.

We don’t cook it. Tomato, salt, and that is the sauce.

The cheese cabinet

The taleggio on the Cheesus Christ is Arnoldi. Taleggio is the washed-rind one, so it smells like it means business and tastes far gentler than it smells. It melts into the cream and the pecorino rather than sitting on top.

The stracciatella that goes on Paulie’s with the salami casalingo and the hot honey is the one thing on this list that isn’t Italian. It is made in Sydney. Torn mozzarella in cream, milky and loose, cold against a warm sando. Half the reason that one works, and no, we are not flying a fresh cream cheese in from Puglia to prove a point.

And the extra virgin olive oil across the menu. Not a finishing flourish. It is on the Margherita, it is in the sandos, we go through it.

Why it doesn’t just go on the main order

We have a broadline supplier like everyone does. One truck, one invoice, cling wrap through to chicken thigh. For most of a kitchen that is the right call and we are not precious about it.

The Italian core doesn’t go on that order. There is a cheaper deli meat one phone call away and plenty of places use it. You have eaten it without knowing.

The problem is it tastes like what it is. Mass-cured meat is pumped, wet and flat, made fast to hit a price. Good salumi is dry-cured slowly so the flavour concentrates instead of washing out. Put the two next to each other in a sando and it is not close.

A specialist importer also knows their producers, which a catalogue does not. Which season was good, what to leave alone this year. That is most of what we are buying.

What is local, and what isn’t

Ask whether Francesca’s uses local ingredients and the answer is yes, most of it.

The salami casalingo on Paulie’s, the capocollo in the Gabagool and the nduja are made by Marino Fine Foods at Croydon Park, by a family who have been doing it since 1957. The mozzarella and the parmesan come from La Casa del Formaggio at Glynde. The bacon on the Junior’s is Hahndorf. The basil, rocket, truss tomatoes, mushrooms and lemons are Tony & Marks. The focaccia and the pizza dough are made in our own kitchens every morning on a 48-hour ferment.

Six things come from Italy. Prosciutto di Parma, provolone, pecorino, taleggio, the polpa and the olive oil.

They come from Italy because that is where they are better, and because there is no Prosciutto di Parma made in South Australia. There cannot be. Nearly everything else we can get within an hour of the shops, so that is where we get it.

What is local about Bottega is the merchant. Twenty minutes up King William Road means we can drive over and look at the thing, change an order the same week, and ask a question of someone who has actually tasted it. That is worth more than a line on a website.