Olive oil panini with salame Sant Angelo and Provola dei Nebrodi

It looks like this year there will be no winter season in Sicily, we are flying from autumn straight into spring. Nevertheless, the wish for wintery food is high and, after all, it does get chilly by night. So last Saturday we lit the fireplace, my daughter and I made some extra virgin olive oil based bread, that we leave to rise twice, and had a simple delicious meal with bread, cheese and salame near the fireplace. The bread was very good, the cheese and salame were excellent products coming from the Nebrodi Mountain area near Messina: Salame S. Angelo and Provola Sfoglia.

Salame S. Angelo IGP is one of the best salami produced in Sicily in Sant Angelo di Brolo in the Nebrodi Mountain area.
The art of making this salami goes back to the time of the Norman colonization of Sicily. And today, it is still produced with the traditional method, using only the noble cuts of pork, cutting the meat with a knife into small pieces (the result being something coarser the minced meat).
It ages naturally thanks to the micro-climate of the valley Santangiolese. A valley of wonderful hazelnut and olive trees, which is characterised by air currents, temperature and humidity that make it a "natural aging room", an unique and extraordinary microclimate in Sicily.
When you cut it, the slices are compact and homogeneous, ruby red in colour with white fat distributed unevenly. It has a delicate smell, just slightly spicy, when you start eating it, you cannot stop.

The Provola Sfoglia is a cow milk based, stretched-curd cheese. Simply another fantastic product from the Nebrodi area.
It is produced by the experienced hands of local cheese makers between March and October, using the traditional methods handed down from father to son. They still use the old equipment: various wooden containers (tina, cisca, piddiaturi), wooden sticks (rotula e/o brocca, appizzatuma, manuvedda), rattan basket, wooden board, copper paiolo, etc. Each cheese maker marks the neck of the provola in a different way as a way to brand the product.
The Provola weighs between three to four kilos and has a minimum aging period of 75 days but can also go up to a year. Well aged provole begins to crack, breaking away, so when you cut one open you can see different flaky layers, like in puff pastry (pasta sfoglia) this is why it is know as "sfoglia".
A special version of this cheese is the one where a "verdello" lemon is placed inside the provola.
At the end of the necessary aging period, which lasts for at least six months, the cheese is ready to surprise the palate, having acquired a penetrating yet delicate aroma of the small unripe lemon that turns out to have "magically" ripened within it.