Bourdain’s mortadella and cheese

This week we’re getting meaty and cheesy with what is basically Italian bologna and provolone. We’re making the bread ourselves in the form of Kaiser rolls from scratch and using all of it to build this very tasty sandwich.

What is this sandwich?

This is a simple five-ingredient sandwich that is super easy and quick to cook, but it has an amazing depth of flavor and contrasting textures. The sandwich is originally based on a sandwich that is sold at a restaurant called Bar do Mané (Instagram) in São Paulo, Brazil. They have been serving a version of this sandwich at Mercado Municipal, a large public market, since 1933.

Both of the following photos are screen captures from a very good (non-English) Instagram reel that Bar do Mané was tagged in featuring this mortadella-focused sandwich. The video is from a user named @lelecomentalizei. I did not make a special trip to Brazil before writing this post, so I grabbed these to help display exactly what the sandwich is that we’re talking about here and how it is cooked because we will end up making ours a bit different.

Why is this sandwich so special?

If you’re as hooked up online as I am you might feel that every other food-focused content creator on the internet has covered this sandwich except for me. Since I’m a very thorough and conscientious sandwich blogger, I figured this had to be addressed sooner or later so I bought some provolone and mortadella and got to work.

Why have so many content creators made this particular sandwich? I think there are three reasons.

1. It’s a very good, simple sandwich concept
2. It is almost too easy to make
3. Anthony Bourdain is involved

Anthony Bourdain

If you’ve never heard of him, the late Anthony Bourdain was a chef, author, and food-focused television personality. He was the host of two popular food and travel-based shows called No Reservations and Parts Unknown. Bourdain was known for his sarcastic, sometimes abrasive wit and his ability to embrace the cuisines of other cultures. Anthony Bourdain died in 2018 at the age of 61 leaving behind a powerful, inspiring legacy in the culinary world and a whole lot of people who thoroughly enjoyed his content and viewpoints.

Because of his personality and his uninhibited ability to say things that a lot of people would only think, Bourdain is extremely popular among food content creators and consumers alike. He wrote several nonfiction books about the culinary world as well as some fiction titles, a couple of graphical novels, and two cookbooks, one of which I now own and will give a brief review.

Click here if you want to skip the cookbook chat, and go straight to the bread content.
Or if you want to roll past that down to the sandwich photos and recipe.

Appetites: A Cookbook

In the run-up to my making the first one of these sandwiches for this blog post, I decided to buy Anthony Bourdain’s Appetites: A Cookbook (also available at Bookshop.org). I was very familiar with Bourdain at this point through watching episodes of his two shows and seeing him on TV from time to time bashing the likes of Paula Deen, but I had never looked at either of his two cookbooks. I read an ebook version of his first non-fiction book years ago, called Kitchen Confidential, that dives into behind the scenes of restaurant life, and really enjoyed it at that time.

This particular cookbook was released in 2016 and since I’m sure no one has had the time yet to give it a proper review in the 9 years since it was published, I figured I could write up some of my thoughts on the matter.

I will start with the fact that I don’t think Anthony Bourdain in life and his writing has the type of personality that everyone will like. And he didn’t seem to care. Bourdain had the ability to put his personality deep into his writing. His Appetites: A Cookbook is no exception. If you already know him and know that his personality is a bit abrasive to you, I’m pretty sure that this cookbook will also rub you the same way.

Appetites: A Cookbook is not for a beginner cook. This isn’t to say that a beginner can’t cook some of the recipes, but it’s not going to baby you with a whole lot of extra instructions or techniques. The cookbook itself has a whole lot of Bourdain’s personality in it, including a whole two-page spread plus an insert on how to make Bourdain’s perfect cheeseburger.

There’s at least one very large 2-page spread of a photo of a dog seemingly aggressively biting a piece of meat maybe which isn’t usually a part of your typical cookbook. The intro page to the sandwich section is a photo of a piece of toast on the bottom of a boot. Most of the photography in this cookbook seems to be chosen more for the art than to describe any cooking process. While that isn’t good for all cookbooks, I think it works here because of who Anthony Bourdain is and it works with his personality and words.

In some ways, this is more of a coffee table book or a book that someone might use as a conversation starter than a cookbook. And I think that’s the point. I feel it’s also why a lot of people really like this cookbook because they like Anthony Bourdain and his style.

Would I suggest that you purchase this cookbook? That’s not an easy question to answer. Instead of deciding for you, I created an HTML data table. You can choose your own adventure.

Now that I’ve covered the cookbook, we can dig a little deeper into Bourdain’s mortadella sandwich vs the sandwich that inspired his recipe.

Differences between Bourdain’s version and Bar do Mané’s version

There are a couple of differences between the sandwich recipe in Appetites: A Cookbook and the original sandwich it’s based on.

Bourdain’s recipe calls for a Kaiser roll or sourdough bread and the sandwich from Brazil is served on what appears to be a six-inch roll that’s sliced diagonally. After watching a bunch of videos of Bar do Mané’s version, it seems like a hard roll or Kaiser roll is probably a pretty good substitution and it’s a very available option of a bread roll that most people can probably find.

The Bar do Mané mortadella sandwich is served sauceless—just meat and cheese. Bourdain’s recipe adds mayonnaise and Dijon mustard which is really a big change that helps a whole lot to bring some balance to this fatty and cheesy sandwich. This is a great change and it’s a couple of components to a sandwich that a lot of people will already have in their fridge.

The final difference between Bourdain’s recipe and the Bar do Mané sandwich is in how they are cooked. I will get into the Bourdain version a bit further down the page, but the Bar do Mané sandwich is cooked with the meat and the cheese both cooking directly on the stainless steel flat top surface. This isn’t that easy to do at home because the cheese takes a lot of skill to cook that way and it takes a lot of temperature control. As you’ll see when I get to how Bourdain cooks his sandwich, I feel that his changes are to make this sandwich easier for a home cook to take care of with ease.

Now that we know what sandwich we’re making, it’s time to get into the bread and ingredients.

Homemade Kaiser rolls

I have shared this Kaiser roll recipe a few times at this point and it works great for a bacon, egg, and cheese or New Jersey’s favorite pork sandwich. People in the northeastern part of the United States may describe this as a “hard roll” and while it’s not as soft as a super soft hamburger bun, it’s not at all hard. It’s firm enough to hold up to soft ingredients and in general, makes a great sandwich roll.

You can make the design on the top of Kaiser rolls with a stamp or by knotting the dough. I’ve only tried the dough knot technique once and generally just prefer to use the Kaiser stamp because it’s easy and works well. It does require you to handle the risen dough a bit more than you do when making burger buns or sub rolls, but as long as you’re gentle, and follow my tips in the recipe it should work just fine.

A helpful person named Joyce in the comments of my Kaiser Roll recipe mentioned that they did not own a Kaiser roll stamp but they used a silicone meat chopper that is typically used to break up ground beef and prevent you from opening your utensil drawer and I thought that was a pretty smart idea. I do not own one of these and have not tried this, but it looks like ti would work and it would prevent you from having another unitasker in your kitchen.

So, you don’t have to buy a Kaiser roll stamp, but if you did buy one or do own one, here is how I apply one to this recipe process.

You use the Kaiser stamp after you have shaped the dough into smaller dough balls but before the final hour or so of rise time.

Dust the Kaiser roll stamp

You don’t have to decorate the top of a Kaiser roll at all if you do not want to go to the trouble. It’s just for aesthetics.

But if you are planning to use a Kaiser roll stamp you need to remember to dust it off with flour between pressing each dough ball. This does two things, it makes the stamp press through the dough easier and it puts a little dry flour inside the slits that you created during the stamping process that actually keeps the dough from sticking together and closing back up during the final proofing.

Just put some extra flour in a bowl to help dust off the Kaiser roll stamp and then pour that bowl full of flour back in to use next time you bake.

Invert for the final dough rise

After you stamp the pattern into the top of a shaped dough ball, admire your work, and then flip it over, stamped side down onto a small piece of parchment. I typically portion out 5-inch by 5-inch pieces of parchment before I start stamping to make this easier.

Reinvert after doubling in size

Then you move the dough on parchment to a sheet pan and allow the buns to proof and rise until they are doubled and ready to bake (at least one hour). After the end, right before baking, carefully flip each parchment and fluffy dough ball over again and carefully peel the parchment to expose the pattern you made earlier.

All of this extra work—which really isn’t that much—is to help keep that shape and pattern on the top of the roll. If you allow the rolls to rise without inverting them, the dough will puff up and destroy the Kaiser roll pattern (believe me I did this in one of my earlier batches a few years ago).

Here’s my Kaiser roll recipe. As I wrote earlier, it’s not a hard bread recipe to make, it just has that extra step of stamping a pattern on the top and requires you to handle the dough a bit more than is typical with a hamburger bun. Take your time and you’ll get it just fine.

Kaiser rolls

Recipe Card

2 hours and 47 minutes

Kaiser rolls

Some areas call a Kaiser roll a "hard roll," but this roll is anything but hard. The outside is a tiny bit crusty, and the interior is firm, but still squishy where it counts. This is a great roll for sandwiches or burgers.

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Mortadella

Mortadella is very similar to bologna except it’s Italian and fancier. It is high in fat, you can see it all throughout each slice. This fat will be rendered in a hot pan which will perform two functions, it will create lubrication for the meat and cheese and it will also bring flavor and assist with creating crunchy texture in the toasting bun slices.

Depending on the store, you might be able to find mortadella in presliced packages, but most likely you will need to head to the deli counter to ask for some to be freshly sliced for you. If possible, ask the slicer to slice the meat fairly thin. The sandwich will work whether the meat is thickly or thinly sliced, but a thinner slice will allow you to form piles of meat which gives the final sandwich a bit more openness and airiness.

Provolone

Provolone might not be the exact cheese used in the Bar do Mané version of this sandwich, but it is definitely a good choice in Anthony Bourdain’s version. Provolone is probably readily available at pretty much any grocery store in the United States (which is where I’m assuming he expected most of his cookbooks to be sold?) You could make this sandwich with cheese like Swiss or gouda as well, if you can’t find provolone.

Provolone sears really well. You can cook provolone until the edges are dark brown and it still tastes good, it just gets crunchy and caramelized. The crispy edges will provide a texture that balances out all of the creamy, soft texture in the middle of the sandwich.

Dijon mustard and mayonnaise

These two condiments are not added to the official Bar do Mané sandwich. They could be available as condiments on the side though. Bourdain makes sure to make them part of the recipe ingredients and I think one of them makes a huge difference. The sandwich without these two components is a fatty and cheesy sandwich. You can add the mayonnaise, and I’m not sure that anything other than a bit more creaminess is added, but the twang of the Dijon mustard pulls the flavors of the sandwich together.

I think Bourdain just added mayonnaise to ensure the sandwich stays over the top, but the Dijon mustard is a condiment that I simply do not think that the sandwich is as good without.

Cooking process

The cooking process for this sandwich all happens in one pan, skillet, or griddle. You heat up a pan, pile on the mortadella (don’t just lay it down flat), and then when the edges of the mortadella or the fat around the mortadella is starting to turn brown it’s safe to flip.

At this point, you should have seared one edge of the meat.

Cook the meat for a minute or so on the second side, and then top each pile of meat with one slice of provolone. Continue cooking until the edges of the provolone that are touching the pan start to brown.

At this point, you can stack your piles of mortadella on top of each other and add your sliced bun to the pan on top of some of the mortadella fat that shimmering.

Toast the bun for a minute or so and then remove both halves to a cutting board, toasted side up to rest. Cook the meat and cheese for another minute and then turn off the heat. Add mayonnaise to the bottom side of the toasted bun and Dijon mustard to the top side of the bun and then add the pile of meat and cheese and finish the sandwich.

Bourdain’s mortadella and cheese sandwich

The flavors of this sandwich are gooey from the melty cheese with slightly sweet, meaty fattiness from the mortadella. Tartness from the Dijon mustard helps to contrast both of those flavors, bringing a balance in the sandwich force.

The edges of the mortadella where it gets seared will taste a bit crunchy which working with the toasted bread, brings a lot of texture to the sandwich. Provolone also gets a little crispy when it touches the pan which combines well with the very melty cheese throughout the rest of the sandwich.

Bourdain's mortadella and cheese sandwich

Recipe

Bourdain's mortadella and cheese sandwich

This unbelievably simple, meaty, and cheesy sandwich has great flavor and fantastic contrasting textures. This is my version of Anthony Bourdain's recipe which is based on a sandwich from Brazil. You should read the accompanying blog post about this sandwich if you wish to learn more.

Tags: dijon mustard mayonnaise mortadella provolone

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by Jonathan Surratt

Ingredients:

• 1 teaspoon vegetable oil or olive oil
• 6 to 9 thin slices of mortadella
• 3 slices of provolone
• 1 Kaiser roll or sandwich roll
• mayonnaise
• Dijon mustard

Direct Link to Recipe

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Directions:

Place a large skillet over medium heat and allow the pan to heat up for 4 or 5 minutes. Add a teaspoon of oil to the pan to make sure things are slightly lubricated.

Fold up 3 piles of mortadella and place them in the pan. Cook the meat for 3 to 4 minutes or until the edges of the mortadella and/or the fat around the slices start to brown. 

Flip the mortadella piles and cook for 2 minutes and then add provolone slices, one on top of each pile. 

Once the edges of the provolone start to brown (about 2 to 3 minutes), stack all three piles of meat and cheese into one large stack. Move the large stack to one side of the pan so you have room to toast the Kaiser roll or sandwich roll in the residual fat left in the pan until the bread is lightly toasted—about 3 minutes.

Once the bread is toasted, remove it to a cooling rack to rest and turn off the heat under the pan. Add mayonnaise to the bottom of the roll and a healthy smear of Dijon mustard to the top. 

Transfer the pile of meat and cheese into the dressed sandwich roll and serve.

Check back next week

Next week we’ll be eastbound and down. And we might even be loaded up and truckin’, but you’ll have to come back and check for yourself. Hopefully, we’ll make a sandwich and maybe even drink a Dr. Pepper.