Eating in the car: sandwiches created by five great chefs

Driving requires attention, an aspect that a proper diet significantly improves. After all, if lightness and digestibility are essential for daily well-being, they're even more so when you're traveling by car , or even in a camper, which certainly doesn't aid digestion as much as a good walk. The right choice? The debate is endless: is it better to have a big breakfast to last as long as possible during the stop, or a stop at a service station, or perhaps a detour a few kilometers from the toll booth for a quick bite? We won't go into the details, but we tried to elevate the snack stop by asking five masters of Italian cuisine—motoring enthusiasts, no coincidence—to create a sandwich for our readers that will delight the palate and continue the journey lightly. Follow the recipe carefully, less complicated than it may seem, and store the "result." Enjoy!

A longtime BMW ambassador, Andrea Berton runs the Michelin-starred restaurant that bears his name in Porta Nuova. For our readers, he's created a veal tonnato sandwich , or rather, six sandwiches, given that the portions are for a group of cheerful vacationers. First, we prepare the veal, a nice 600-gram veal topside: cleaned, salted, and peppered. We heat it in a pan with 50 grams of seed oil and brown it on both sides, before finishing cooking it in the oven at 140°C (280°F) for 40 minutes. Then, let the meat cool and cut it into thin slices. For the tuna sauce, beat 90 grams of egg yolk in a mixer with 500 grams of sunflower oil until the desired consistency. Then, adjust the salt and acidity with 15 grams of sherry vinegar. Add 200 grams of blended tuna in oil, blending until very smooth. Finally, we cut the baguette in half, spread the tuna sauce on top, and top with the previously seasoned veal with tuna sauce. The finishing touch is the Pantelleria capers and some celery leaves.

Heinz Beck has always been a heavy-handed chef: whenever possible, he pushes the Mercedes cars, his favorite since he was young, to the limit. Rome's culinary king (the city's only Three-Star restaurant since 2005) has created a fantastic focaccia with bresaola, artichokes, and a pesto of aromatic herbs and pine nuts . The doses are for four people: "Wash 200 grams of baby artichokes, remove the tough outer leaves, the inner beard and obtain the hearts. Cut them into quarters and place them in water acidulated with lemon. Then wash the herbs of your choice (parsley, sage, rosemary, oregano, thyme, marjoram), dry them and chop them all together. In a pan, brown a spoonful of this mixture with a little extra virgin olive oil. Add the well-drained baby artichokes and sauté them over high heat for a couple of minutes. Then lower the heat, add a ladle of broth (or water), a pinch of pepper and continue cooking for about seven minutes. Remove the artichokes from the bottom and adjust salt, if necessary. Let's move on to the pesto for which you will need 20 grams of mint, 50 grams of basil, 20 grams of lemon balm, 10 grams of tarragon, 10 grams of marjoram, extra virgin olive oil, 15 grams of pine nuts, 15 grams of sheep's milk ricotta, cardamom, and the zest of one lemon. Wash and blanch the herbs, add them to all the other ingredients, and blend with an immersion blender until creamy. Cut the focaccia in half, and after adding bresaola to taste, spread with pesto and add the herbed artichokes.

Chicco Cerea is the executive chef of the Da Vittorio group, the largest restaurant chain in Italy, which counts BMW as its Mobility Partner. In total, he holds nine Michelin stars in Italy, China, France, and Switzerland. Since fish is the house specialty, we're not surprised by his "fisherman's sandwich," created especially for Gazzetta Motori . Heat the bread roll in the oven, using a white or Arabic-style bread roll weighing about 80 grams, without letting it dry out too much. Sauté 40 grams of zucchini, previously sliced, in extra virgin olive oil until nicely browned. The white fish (turbot, sea bass, John Dory, etc.) should be thinly sliced and lightly dipped in flour and egg, before frying it in a pan with a little seed oil until golden brown. Remember to season both the fish and the zucchini well. The bread roll should be assembled with mayonnaise on the base (ideally homemade, but store-bought is also fine), the sautéed zucchini in the middle, the fish fillet, and a little more mayonnaise. The extra touch? A few mint and fresh basil leaves.

Motorcycles are a big deal for Riccardo Monco , executive chef of the legendary Enoteca Pinchiorri in Florence and a big fan of the Pramac Racing Team in MotoGP. He offers us a multigrain ciabatta with a wonderful filling . Let's start with the tartar sauce, for which you'll need a hard-boiled egg, 20 grams of black truffle, two anchovy fillets, two pickled gherkins, parsley leaves, the crumb of the ciabatta itself, half a teaspoon of whole grain mustard, and extra virgin olive oil. Chop all the ingredients separately and mix them gently rather than blending them, so as to preserve their individual flavors. Then, cut the ciabatta in half (already without the crumb) and toast it in a pan with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, just on the inside, until nice and crispy. Wait for it to cool and spread the tartar sauce. Using a microplane, grate generously of Fontina cheese all over the ciabatta and finally—strictly hand-cut—slices of prosciutto crudo, which should be at room temperature. I have a weakness for Mora Romagnola, but you decide..."

Giancarlo Perbellini is a keen traveler, managing his small empire of restaurants in Verona—including the three-starred Casa Perbellini 12 Apostoli—as well as his restaurants on Lake Garda, in Milan, and in Sicily. For us, he's created a refined fish sandwich . If we want the best, we have to prepare steamed buns by mixing 130 grams of flour, 38 grams of milk, 5 grams of fresh brewer's yeast, a whole egg, 5 grams of sugar, 25 grams of butter and 4 grams of salt until we obtain a smooth and homogeneous dough. We break the dough into balls of 20 grams each and let it rise until it doubles in volume. We steam them for seven minutes, let them cool and then lightly sear them on both sides in a very hot non-stick pan, until lightly golden. We move on to the red prawns, preferably already cleaned: cut them into cubes (about 40 grams per portion), add 15 grams of diced bacon and mix well. Press the mixture into mini burger shapes and sear them in the pan on both sides, leaving the inside slightly pink. Finally, the 'nduja mayonnaise is made by mixing 60 grams of 'nduja, a pinch of chopped rosemary, 5 grams of caramelized lemon (previously reduced), 50 grams of soy milk, and 100 grams of grapeseed oil: all this to make a bold, fragrant, eggless mayonnaise. Then, cut the sandwich in half and spread the base with the special mayonnaise. Add a little arugula, the shrimp "Swiss" and a lightly grated lemon zest. I love it, I hope you do too..."