Il Classico: ham and mozzarella, the Neapolitan bar way

Prosciutto cotto is Italian cooked ham: pork leg, seasoned and slowly cooked, then sliced thin. Good cotto is pale pink, moist and mild, with a narrow ribbon of fat at the edge. In Italy it is the everyday ham of sandwiches and children's lunches, and nobody confuses it with Prosciutto di Parma, which is salted, aged and never cooked. The gap between the two prosciutti is explained in crudo vs cotto, side by side.

Fior di latte is the cow's-milk version of fresh mozzarella. It is soft and milky, and next to a mild ham it adds moisture rather than a strong flavor of its own.

Pane & olio comes here as a round roll that closes over the filling like a bun, and nothing in Il Classico needs a heavy crust to hold it in. How it compares with the flat breads and the ciabatta we use elsewhere is covered in our guide to Italian breads.

The dried cherry tomatoes (pomodorini secchi) supply the one sharp note. Drying concentrates a tomato's sugar and acidity, so a few of them do the work of a whole sliced tomato without making the bread wet. Against mild ham and milky cheese, that is enough.

In a Neapolitan bar the ham-and-mozzarella panino sits in the glass case through the morning, and regulars point at it without reading a label. It is what you eat when you do not feel like deciding. Simplicity has a cost, though: with three fillings and a bread, there is nowhere for a weak ingredient to hide.

If you want the same ham in breakfast form, Il Tricolore puts prosciutto cotto and fior di latte inside a croissant. If you want the cured version, Parma al Verde swaps the cotto for Prosciutto di Parma with arugula and pesto. The full line-up is on the panini page.