Piadina/Cassoni - for New Shoot

This makes 7-8 piadinas, recipe from OH's family in Rimini.

Ingredients: 500g strong white flour, 100g lard/veggie fat or 100ml olive oil (or a mix of oil & fat, the fat makes it flakier), warm water, 1 tsp salt, a little (1/4 tsp) bicarbonate of soda.

Mix the dry ingredients, add the oil/fat and enough warm water to make a smooth dough. Knead for 10 mins or so, adding more flour if necessary, then chill for an hour before using. Roll out into thin discs and dry fry in a flat, non-stick pan on both sides till brown. You need to prick the discs with a fork to avoid air bubbles that will just burn. Keep warm and pliable under a tea-towel. They are nice the next day, but will be quite dry and brittle. Put the filling in one half and fold over. Typical filling is air-dried ham, tomato slices, oiled rocket and parmesan shavings. Anything too wet tends to dribble out.

For cassoni, roll out the discs as for piadina. I cut round a plate for properly symmetrical discs, but it's not essential. Add a filling that isn't too wet, spread evenly and not more than 1cm thick maximum. Leave 1.5cm around the edge. Fold over, make sure there aren't any air bubbles and seal the filling in with the edge of a fork. Crimp the margin with the fork tines. Sometimes damping the dough helps the crimping, depending on how much flour's been used to roll them out. Cook as for piadina, but without pricking the dough.

Cassoni filling - I use a mix of cooked chopped greens - usually leaf chicory, spinach, garlic + any herbs I fancy, cooked, squeezed and chopped again. Adding a bit of parmesan/blue cheese or dried ham is pretty good, but make sure what you add isn't too wet. Nice cold as well as hot.