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Piadina, a Romagna speciality
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| The Piadina, piada or "piè" as it is known in Romagna has many names, but all bring to mind sun, sea and holidays. It came into being as peasant bread, yet today it is the queen of delicious snacks on the Romagna Riviera. From the Adriatic, this gastronomic delight has gone on to conquer all of Italy with endless kiosks now preparing them, and they are even to be found in New York. |
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THE ADRIATIC'S STREET FOOD |
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They call it the piadina, piada, or even the "piè", as Pascoli used to call it, and today real Romagna residents continue to do so. There are many names, but the substance is still the same; a fragrant and highly perfumed bread disc that carries with it all the flavour of the land that invented it, namely Romagna. For the many tourists who have stopped in at least once at the coloured kiosks lining the Adriatic coast between Rimini, Riccione and Gabicce, the flavour will always bring to mind sun, sea and holiday memories.
Once a poor man's bread, the piadina is today the preferred food of bathers, a light and delicious "street food" to be eaten under a beach umbrella or a fast meal to be eaten before a night on the town in one of the Riviera's many discos. It is a local food with ancient roots which is however aiming to go global: piadinerie have sprung up all over Italy, not to mention pioneers from Rimini who even exported it to the US, in the heart of Manhattan.
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The genuine and homemade Romagna piadina has however lost its legendary roots in the mists of time. One of these legends has it that it was none other than Aeneas, the hero in Virgil's poem, who on landing on Italian coasts after escaping from Troy had to eat unleavened ship's biscuits that the sailors used for plates. According to other sources, the recipe was handed down to the ancient Romans by the Etruscans, who prepared an unleavened bread using flour and water, cooking it on scalding hot tiles. This idea is recalled by the word teggia, similar to the Italian for tile (tegola), and is the name for the tin with raised sides still used by piadina vendors today.
Closer to the present day, the debate as to who can boast paternity of the piadina is still disputed amongst the villages and towns of Romagna. Those from Rimini, who prepare a version that is thin and low in fats, are those most convinced that it was of their own invention. But each area of Romagna has a local variation: small, thick and soft in Ravenna and the hinterland, large and thin in the south of Romagna.
In any case, it is an unleavened bread without yeast and its name would seem to derive from the Greek plakous, which means flat bread and harks back to the days of the Byzantine domination of Romagna.
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The azdore, or Romagna's housewives, once used to work the dough by hand combining traditional "poor" ingredients: water, flour, coarse grain salt (preferably from Cervia), bicarbonate and lard. They would leave the breads to levitate and then pull them into a dough no more than three millimetres high using the s'ciador, the rolling pins also used for making tortellini. It is essential not to make the piadina when the south-westerly wind is blowing: the warm and damp wind makes the dough too soft and ruins the final result. Once rolled out, the piadina is placed on the teggia, the typical round clay tile that is called the testo in Rimini, and is left cook on the flame for two minutes, taking care to turn it in a clockwise direction as tradition dictates using a flat blade knife, and piercing the holes on the surface.
Once cooked, it should be eaten piping hot, folded in two or cut into four or else rolled up. Filled, of course: greens, pan-fried vegetables and also cooked ham, pork scratchings and cured meats of all kinds. Of the cheeses, the classic filling is Squacquerone, a soft Italian cheese accompanied by cured ham. The crescione has a particularly appetising filling: this higher piadina is filled to bursting with sausages and vegetables sautéed with garlic and oil, and is folded in two.
What's the perfect accompaniment? A good glass of Sangiovese, the Romagna red that's as bright and cheerful as the people of its land.
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