A Study In Beige: Sicilian Pane e Panelle

The chickpea is among the first crops that humans domesticated. Human agriculture began in the so-called Fertile Crescent, an area spanning the eastern end of the Mediterreanean shore up through Southeastern Turkey and down along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers through modern-day Syria, Iraq, and Kuwait to the Persian Gulf. The archaeological record shows human consumption of chickpeas at sites in this region as early as 7500 BCE and potentially earlier. As a species we have been eating chickpeas for a long time.

Chickpeas, or garbanzo beans… or ceci, the Italian word for the pulse, which comes from the Latin cicer. Chickpeas have been consumed all over the Mediterranean for millennia, and on the Italian peninsula since at least the Roman times–bowls of chickpeas were preserved by the ash that covered the city of Herculaneum during the same eruption of Mount Vesuvius that destroyed Pompeii. Chickpeas, and especially chickpea flour, are used in a number of Italian dishes–Pasta e ceci, a stew of chickpeas and short round tubes of pasta in broth with tomato paste and herbs; farinata, a savory pancake made with chickpea flour; panissa, a type of small fritter made with chickpea flour in Liguria; and panelle, a slightly larger Sicilian chickpea fritter studded with parsley and often served in soft sesame-seed buns with a squeeze of lemon.

On the far north side of Chicago, situated in the Edgewater neighborhood at the corner of Broadway and Ardmore, there is a restaurant serving “Sicilian street food” called Sfera.

Sfera’s 2 main featured Sicilian dishes appear to be arancini, balls of risotto wrapped around fillings such as meat sauce and cheese before being breaded and deep fried; and sfincione, also known as Sicilian pizza, thick rectangles of focaccia-like bread topped with onions, herbs, tomatoes, anchovies, or strong cheeses. However, they also serve a selection of pani cunzatu meaning seasoned bread–Sicilian sandwiches–and desserts such as cakes, pastries, sorbets and gelati. We tried a cross-section of the above, and my personal favorite thing was Mindy’s panino burrata with prosciutto added to it, essentially a flatbread, thicker than a piadina and more similar to Greek pita, folded around burrata cheese, tomatoes, pesto, and prosciutto, and heated in a sandwich press. The Chicago-style sfincione also looked pretty good, but I did not get a chance to sample it.

However, I was there to try the pane e panelle.

Sfera’s panelle come in a wide, round, but rather flat and dense sesame seed-studded bread roll. The sandwich also includes roasted red pepper and a vegan lemon-pepper aioli made with cashews. These are non-canonical additions but I have a sense that the panelle alone in a sandwich might not appeal to the American palate.

The panelles are fried nicely just past golden-brown, giving them a crisp surface, though the inside does still have a bit of a softer, polenta-like texture.

The bread pictured in most illustrations I’ve seen for the Sicilian pane e panelle is a round, crusty, sesame seed-studded bun, yes–but less dense and certainly thicker, shaped to a round and raised higher than the roll I experienced at Sfera. I’ve read many a recipe for the sandwich and most just call the bread a “crusty roll” or a “panino.” However, one recipe I read (in Italian) called for something called mafalda. Mafalda, it turns out, is one possible shape for Pane Siciliano, or Sicilian bread

Sicilian bread is made from a semolina-based dough, and the mafalda shape is rolled out long and thin, then wound back and forth several times and folded back over the top of itself, like a coiled snake. I made a couple of poor attempts at mafaldas, and one passable version of a Kaiser, then simply made the rest of them into round buns. (Another possible shape for Sicilian bread is Occhi di Santa Lucia, or the eyes of Saint Lucy, a very cool type of stylized S–next time I’ll try that one).

To make panelle, chickpea flour is mixed in a pan with double the volume of water and a little salt, and stirred constantly while heated until it thickens and the mixture pulls away from the sides of the pan. Then chopped parsley is mixed in as the mixture is removed from the heat, and it’s spread over the bottom of a sheet pan and allowed to cool and set. Some recipes call for putting it into a loaf pan and slicing instead of cutting the congealed sheet pan chickpea mix into rectangles but this works for me.

My layer of chickpea batter was uneven, resulting in panelle that varied in thickness from about what I saw at Sfera to a half-inch or so thick. Deep-fried, they were crisp-edged and soft inside, with a neutral but savory chickpea flavor punctuated by the fresh peppery bitterness of parsley.

To assemble a sandwich, I simply split a Pane Siciliano roll in half and stacked up some panelles, providing a lemon wedge for each eater to season their own.

This sandwich is… not for me. Now in all likelihood I have done a poor job of replicating the panelle, and if I ever find myself in Palermo I will be certain to rectify this impression by trying the real thing. But the panelle are all texture, little flavor, and the brightness of lemon juice and the pungency of parsley do little to punctuate the overall… beigeness of the thing.

So in short, I made a better bread, but a poorer panelle. And I am not motivated sufficiently by the idea of this sandwich to give it another shot.

I would love to hear from any Tribunal readers who are fans of the sandwich though–what do you like about it? Do you make it yourself or where can you get a good one?