A few days ago I made and shared with you the recipe of my first piadina: Homemade piadina with prosciutto, stracchino and rocket. When I shared it on my Facebook page, my friend Marco Drudi, who is from the area in Italy where piadine come from, kindly shared with me his family recipe! The ingredients are almost the same as that of the first recipe, but he suggested adding a little bit of honey to the dough to give the piadina its traditional amber colour. And then he gave me the biggest tip for a great piadina. Marco told me that the original piadina has to be thick and about 24 to 28 cm in diameter and not thin like in my previous recipe! If you are vegetarian, vegan or want to make a lighter version of this dish, he also suggests substituting the lard with vegetable oil (any olive oil would have too strong a taste). I have not made this lighter version as yet, but if you are interested you can find a vegan recipe on my friend Caterina’s site: Il mondo di Cì, together with lots of yummy and healthy recipes and other interesting tips and posts.
Marco also told me how to make another great dish from Romagna: crescioni. Crescioni are made with the same dough used for piadine but they are stuffed and closed sort of like a panzerotto and then cooked like a piadina. You can fill them with anything you like and they too are divine! Thank you so very much for sharing your recipes Marco: they are really tasty… I hope I managed to do them justice! 🙂
Sharing this recipe with Full Plate Thursday by Miz Helen and It’s a Keeper Thursday by Christina.
Ingredients (makes 3 big piadine):
500 gms flour
4 gm soda bicarbonate
150 gms lard
1tsp salt
3/4 tsp honey
About 200 ml water or enough to make a smooth dough
Fillings
Piadina: stracchino, prosciutto crudo and rocket salad
Crescione: tomato sauce and mozzarella
Put all the ingredients in a mixer with a dough hook and knead for a couple of minutes, till the dough comes together and looks smooth (add the water little by little as the dough is being kneaded). You can also do this by hand but it will require a longer kneading time.
Make 3 smaller balls of dough and roll them into 3 circles about 3 mm thick. Poke their surfaces with a fork to avoid bubbles forming while they are cooking. If bubbles form while cooking, flatten them with a fork.
Cook them on a hot non stick or cast iron skillet (or frying pan). The pan has to be hot, but I’d suggest you lower the flame when you put the piadina to cook as it should not cook too quickly or the piadina will come out hard and break when you put the filling in. Marco suggests using a heat diffuser or putting some rolled aluminium foil around the burner to diffuse the flame and spread the heat more uniformely.
When the piadina starts to brown, flip it over and while it is cooking on the other side add the filling. I used stracchino, prosciutto slices and rocket salad as in my previous piadina recipe because I love this filling and I wanted to be able to compare the 2 recipes.
Once it has cooked on the other side, close it in half and remove from the fire.
Serve it warm with the cheese melting.
CRESCIONI
To make crescioni you proceed in the same way as you make piadina. After rolling the dough into a circle about 3 mm thick, put the filling on one side of the circle and then fold the other side on top of it, to close it as if you were making a panzerotto. Press the sides well with your fingers or the tines of a fork to close the crescione well. I chose a very classic filling: tomato sauce and sliced mozzarella (bocconcini).
To make the tomato sauce, sauté a clove of garlic in 1 tbsp of extra virgin olive oil, add 1 tin of diced tomatoes and 1 pinch of salt. Cover it and let it cook until the sauce thickens enough to be used as a filling.
Cook the crescione the same way as you would cook a piadina. Be careful and try and cook the side as well by keeping the crescione standing. I forgot to do it and, even though the heat had “cooked” it, the side hadn’t browned enough and it was slightly cracked.
Serve warm and enjoy.
On another note… I am happy to announce that I have joined the Foodbuzz’s Featured Publisher Program. I was already part of their community and I got to know so many great fellow foodies and wonderful blogs thanks to it, so becoming a Featured Publisher seemed like the “natural next step” to me!
Hi Manuela, I love your photos, actually I will like to use some of them, maybe you can contact me, we can discuss about this matter, when you can, of course, like my idea!
I’m from Emilia-Romagna, my grand-mum she teach me and tell me all our old family recipes, one of those is the one about the Piadina e Crescioni (or Cascioni, depend of the city:)).
Are existing many different versions of how to make Piadina or Crescioni, but I never heard of add honey in the dough:))) This sound to me quite new and a little “fusion” style:)))
Anyway, the Piadina don’t have a right and precise thickness, when you will eat it in Bologna, they will give you a quite thick and not very large one, instead when you will go in Rimini and eat over there a Piadina, they will give to you a very large and very thin one (that actually they even use to roll to itself sometime).
In Romagna we don’t use water or wine, but milk, all the rest is the same like Marco’s recipe, but not honey!! Never:))
But like I said, we have many version, but when you wanna consider the real original recipe for make Piadina or Crescioni (Panzarotti like you call them:), you will just find the Italian “00” flour (means extra thin), soda bicarbonate, cleaned lard (the secret is how much you add of it:), salt, milk and in some case the “azdora”, that how is called in Emilia-Romagna the older woman making the fresh Piadine and Crescioni, can add a table spoon of Olive Oil E.V.
That’s all! Another little suggestion: like I said your photos are beautiful, but I have noticed how you didn’t cooked the little side of the Crescione (the half inch side that in your photo look white and a little bit broken), the “azdora” use to take the crescione in vertical position, for give a 1 minute cook on the grill to that half inch side, like this you will have a perfect uniform and cooked original Crescione!
I hope that my words they don’t sound to be “unappropiate”, because they honestly aren’t in my mind, I just love food and I start this passion when I was 7 years old when together my grund-mum I was making fresh pasta like ‘cappelletti’, tagliatelle and many more..:)) the Piadina and Crescioni dough is over 700 years very old Emilia-Romagna tradition!
I told you that I love your photos?:))))
Melting cheese makes a dish look so inviting and delicious!
Manu,
Why can’t I just reach through this screen and have this beautiful food that you have prepared. Your photo’s are amazing! Your recipe is wonderful and invites me to try it at my first opportunity which I will do. Thank you so much for sharing with Full Plate Thursday and hope to see you next week!
ciao Manu…mmm che conta’!!!
Piacerissimo di conoscerti. Che bel sito hai anche tu. Adesso siamo connesse. Vado un po’ ad esplorare le tue ricette 🙂
Baci e a presto,
Amelia
Both versions look so good, Manu!
This looks amazing! Thanks you so much for sharing. I will have to make this soon.
Hope you can come see me too!
http://willcookforsmiles.blogspot.com/
.Lovely clicks!!Amazing recipe. First time here , you truly have such a superb collection of recipes. Bookmarked!!
I am soooo hungry! And don’t tell me I shouldn’t complain because I am in Italy, you can’t get anything like that out of Romagna…
How wonderful of him to share his family recipe with you and how wonderful of you to share it with us! The sliced crescione looks amazingly good.
Oh, gosh, BOTH of these look fabulous!!! Great, delicious, post and drool-worthy photos 🙂
Hi Manu, I’m going to try Marco’s version as well – however on a slim day, it has to be your slighly lower carb version. Great step-by-step photos and I love the crescione too.
They look great! And so so delicious.. I like those fillings 🙂
Whoa…looks so yummy! I only make panini at home but I’m getting tired of it and THIS “piadina” (have to remember this name) looks great!!! Your prosciutto picture makes me hungry…at midnight! What a great recipe.
This looks so awesome. As always another great recipe! I think I want to try to make this. Perfect perfect lunch.
OMG Manu .. This is making me hungry !! beautiful beautiful clicks babe 🙂
Oh my goodness, this looks so delicious..my kind of pastry..I just love it!!!
You made it beautifully, and photos are gorgeous!!!