Savory Spiedino Romano: Italian Delight On A Dime

Here's a dish you're definitely less familiar with, but I know you're gonna love. It's called spiadino romano, which literally means the Roman skewered dish. It's got all the elements set up for flavor success. Toasty garlicky bread, melty cheese, and a buttery sauce over top. Let's make it. Life can be a struggle, but a good meal doesn't have to be. We can make creative, nutritious, and inventive dishes that won't break the bank. We'll eat well and save money, because that's what we do. Welcome to Struggle Meals. We're using an Italian loaf. I'm gonna slice it up. Doing nice thick slices of bread here. Eventually, these pieces of bread are gonna be married to cheese. If we don't toast the bread, they're gonna be soggy. We'll lay this bread out into the oven. While that bread toasts, we're gonna slice our cheese. The mozzarella. All right, this cheese can be pretty tough to slice. All right. It sure smells like the bread is toasted. That's what we're looking for. Some crispiness. Now we've got a rough surface, and that means we can rub raw garlic all over it. Perfection. We'll go bread, cheese, bread, cheese, bread, cheese. All right, this is a skewer, and we're gonna do two. So we'll go one off to the side. Boom, boom, boom, boom. This is the best cheesy toast. Now these go in the oven so the cheese melts, and we get a deep, dark color. Ta-da! We're gonna make a delicious, flavorful sauce that we're gonna pour over top of this bread, and it is gonna make it spectacular. We're gonna start with a shallot. I tried to do a pretty fine dice on the shallot. Reason being, we're gonna add some capers in there, and I like to have the size of things to be similar. All right, we're putting some butter into a nice pan. While that butter melts, we're gonna come in with some anchovies. Now, anchovies are the secret ingredient in the Italian grandma kitchen. We're just gonna let them melt right into the butter, and they're gonna give us saltiness and umami. And if you get the quantity right, no one will even know that they're there. So I just like to take the end of a wooden spoon and literally just kind of like jackhammer right into it. I mean, these have been on the heat for 30 seconds, and they're falling apart already. Let's add our shallots into this flavorful butter. To cut through all the richness, a little white wine, the acidity of that will do quite well. Bring this up to a simmer, burn off that alcohol. All right, we're gonna hit it with some chicken stock. More salt, more flavor. So while we wait for this to come up to a simmer, let's head over to the herb garden so that we can finish off this sauce with some bright, fresh vitality. I like parsley, and I love basil for its floral awesomeness. Yum. Got these herbs here. We'll go with the parsley right into our little basil boat. More basil, parsley. And then you literally roll up the little cigar, and you come in and you chop that up. Let's finish this sauce. We take little bits of cold butter and swirl them in. It's gonna help emulsify the whole sauce. Once you see one piece of butter melting, you can come in with the next one. All right, you see how thick that's getting? So now that the butter's all melted into the sauce, let's add our fresh herbs in there. Capers are salt, little buds of flavor. All right, we'll mix that around. We have arrived, or as the Romans would say, siamo arrivati. Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo! Today just got even better. Let's assemble. It smells fantastic. Here's how you serve it. You come in with your sauce. You're gonna pour it right over top. The bread's gonna absorb all the butter, the caper, the wine. It's $2.14 a serving. I can't wait to dig in. You hear that crunch? This is delicious. I mean, the first thing you taste is the spice of that raw garlic that's rubbed all over the bread, and it's softened by the melted cheese. But it's nothing until we get to the sauce. That butter sauce is all absorbed into the bread, and yet the bread is still crunchy. It's sorcery! This is an impressive-looking dish, and it's jam-packed with flavor, meaning everyone will love it. Make it.