"Did I just order a house brick made of pasta?"

Sometimes you just crave carbs, and lots of them. Not because you have any nutritional need for them, just because, at this moment in time, no amount of expertly created salad will ever be a sufficient substitute to that of pure, unadulterated stodge. This is just human nature (or so we’re telling ourselves), feel no guilt, just go forth and seek out your fuel.

Safe to say from the above picture, we did just that. Being on a budget, we carried our rumbling stomachs past the fancy restaurants and tempting trattorias and on to our revered holiday staple, the temple if indulgence, the street food stall. Sometimes these are market tradesmen, other times they’re roadside vendors, this time our stall came in the form of one of the many hole in the wall pit stops. This is perhaps the most common form if street food here in Trapani, just a small inside counter and, if you’ve found a slightly more up-market version, a stool or two on the pavement. Don’t expect fancy cutlery or a dietitian-pleasing platter to tick off all your daily vitamins, just come with an appetite for carb-filled indulgence.

At Trapani’s Pane Cunzato on Piazza Notai, we discovered the epitome of such indulgence: Timballo. Think spaghetti bolognese, combine that image with that of a house brick, cover it in breadcrumbs, deep-fry it and you’ve got it: Timballo, the holy grail of carb-based pleasure.