91 CAPRESSE: serrano ham, mozzarella, fresh tomato and pesto

I've had my issues with the Serrano ham before, and you know my history with pesto, but this is a darn good sandwich. It's a darn good Italian sandwich, as the name suggests, with its mozzarella cheese and ciabatta (might as well call the Serrano ham prosciutto di Parma and roll with it), but darn good nonetheless.

This may well be your best bet in the ham department.

Montaditos down: 91
Montaditos to go: 9
Next: 92 SERRANITO: serrano ham, BBQ Pulled pork, manchego cheese and brava sauce

65 Serrano ham, mozzarella and pesto

If you've read all my previous posts, and of course you have, you know my history with pesto. I don't particularly care for pesto.

So I don't know if there's something that just clicks with this combination, or whether it was a particularly judicious application of said substance, or whether I'm just in a good mood, but I kind of liked the pesto on this sandwich. Creamy mozzarella with that salty ham is a natural, and the green stuff adds just the right background note.

Montaditos down: 65
Montaditos to go: 35
Next: 66 Manchego cheese, fresh tomato, green pepper and anchovies

38 Mozzarella, serrano ham and green pepper

The cheese-to-ham ratio seemed out of whack on this one. If mozzarella gets top billing, it should be bigger than a cylinder broken off a fun-size Kit-Kat bar. And if the mozzarella must be that small, maybe don't layer on so, so much of that salty, chewy ham.

But the proportions got better after the leathery ham forced me to bite off a big chunk of it right away. It's hard to argue with serrano and mozzarella. That green pepper, raw bell pepper in previous appearances, seemed cooked this time. If you told me it was a piece of Anaheim chile, I wouldn't necessarily argue.

Montaditos down: 38
Montaditos to go: 62
Next: 39 Burger, cheddar cheese, bacon, crispy onion and chipotle alioli

37 Mozzarella, pesto, piquillo pepper and arugula (whole-grain bread)

In yesterday's installment, you may recall, I dumped on pesto. As with some of the other hasty hastiness on this blog, I may have been too hasty in that hasty moment.

If anything, I thought the absence of tomato would make mozzarella and pesto even less appealing, but this montadito managed to win me over. If pesto is less than the some of its parts, the sandwich as a whole was the opposite. It had an agreeable sweetness to it. I probably won't order it again, as my refrain goes, but it won my respect.

Montaditos down: 37
Montaditos to go: 63
Next: 38 Mozzarella, serrano ham and green pepper

36 Mozzarella, fresh tomato and pesto (whole-grain bread)

Two new ingredients today: Mozzarella and pesto. Now then.

I love basil. I could sit in your garden and eat it leaf by leaf. Olive oil? I could drink the good stuff. Glug, glug. Garlic, pine nuts, Parmesan cheese? Check, check, check.

But I don't like pesto. Not very much, at least. How can that be? Shrug. To me, it's a jarring flavor, and usually I'm all about the jarring flavors. This one is less than the sum of its parts.

So keep that confession in mind as I tell you I didn't like this sandwich. The bread was fine. The mozzarella needed salt. The tomato needed salt. The pesto was pesto. Have I told you how I feel about pesto?

Montaditos down: 36
Montaditos to go: 64
Next: 37 Mozzarella, pesto, piquillo pepper and arugula