Piadina

Sometimes olive oil is used instead of lard, and milk or baker’s yeast is added, but the essential “ingredient” is the skillful touch of the cook who mixes, kneads, and shapes the piadina. […] Piadinas must be eaten as soon as they are cooked: a cold piadina is heavy and hard to digest and loses its appetizing fragrance if reheated.

The menu offers simple Italian dishes and piadinas, the round, unleavened griddled bread that has been eaten for centuries in the Romagna region. A piadina is a wonderful appetizer for two, particularly with stuffings like prosciutto or cheese and arugula.

Handkerchief bread or lahvash (sold in plastic bags in gourmet, health-food, and Middle Eastern food stores) and flour and corn tortillas are great to keep in the freezer for making quesadillas and piadinas (the Italian version of a quesadilla).

Elaine McArdle’s café beside Dublin Castle has four – four – tables, and the most jam-packed piadinas you ever did eat. They take the wonderful freshly-baked Italian flat bread, and then pack it full of as much good stuff as they can manage, but especially with lots of the thing they sell in the shop – prosciutto, goat’s cheese, roasted red peppers and crunchy rocket leaves.

Created by two friends, Piadina Slowfood makes fabulous stews, curries rolls and – of course – piadinas.

It was for this reason I developed a love for piadinas, for gelato on-the-street, for on-the-hop restaurant ravioli, and most of all for the Italian patisserie.

Lift each piadina onto a baking tray, drizzle with garlic oil (if using) and sprinkle with rosemary. Bake for 7 minutes. If you have a stone in your oven, remove the piadinas from the baking tray after 5 minutes and place them directly onto the stone to cook for another 2 minutes, or until crisp and golden.

Whether you take your time or take it to go, Italio invites you to enjoy a crisp salad, heaping pasta bowl or one of our legendary piadinas - thin, authentic Italian wraps filled with your choice of grilled entrée, delicate pasta, crisp vegetables, artisan cheese and house-made pesto and sauce.