" 'Mpignolata " Loaf with sausage from Agrigento

photos of Jean-Luc Moreau

For the feast of St. Martin around Agrigento is a specialty that we like a lot, the 'mpignolata which is also called' mpriulata or 'mmiscata (depending on the town of origin).


We known it thanks to our guests-friends Lillo, Teresa and Ilaria of Grotte, a small town in the province of Agrigento.

It is a soft bun stuffed with sausage, onion and black olives, and there is another version with spinach and olives.

This dish was originally made at home during the period in which they celebrated San Martino, but now can be found throughout the year.


I found the recipe, although there are several versions. I have not cooked by me, but I ate the 'mpignolate that our friends bring us directly from Grotte.

Ingredients:


1 Kg. of flour, 4 eggs, 50 gr. of yeast, 150 gr. of lard, sausage, black olives, onion, water or milk, oil, salt.

Recipe:
Pour the oil in the flour, mix well, add eggs, mix well, add enough salt, yeast, the lard dissolved and kneading it by adding little by little lukewarm water or milk. Mix well and allow to rise (the dough should be somewhat 'softer than the bread).

When the leavening will be reached, cut the dough into pieces of about 100-150 degrees; pave every piece with a rolling pin, making it take a rectangular shape and thin. Meanwhile in a pan cook the onion cut into slices in olive oil, to which you add the crumbled sausage. Put the sauce of sausage, onion and black olives fleshy and pitted on each rectangle of dough.

Wrap the dough over itself and then again in the shape of a spiral, put on an olives and place in hot oven. Cooking time: 30 minutes.

Now for vegetarians: with spinach.


Boil and then skip the spinach with olive oil in a pan, add the pitted black olives and season rectangles of pasta with this sauce, wrap the dough.


There are several versions in which you use minced beef, chunks of pecorino, Frittola pork, etc, to you the choice!