Tales from an Italian kitchen

Picnic pie with greens and parmesan

Figures wearing goggles cut the knee-high grass in the park the other day. Like a wasp crossed with a revving motorbike, strimming is a strangely soothing sound. It also takes me back to double chemistry lessons on a June afternoon, with the sound and lush smell of the playing field being tamed drifting in through the window and making my eyes itch.

While it’s closely associated with grass, the Italian word erba is a generic word for a number of leaf plants and herbs that don’t develop a woody stem. One of those is wild bietola, or chard, and its cultivated cousins, which provide the dense, green filling for l’erbazzone reggiano, a savoury pie that’s typical of

Reggio Emilia, eponymous city of parmigiano reggiano and one of nine provinces in Emilia-Romagna.

Some trace erbazzone back to the ancient breakfast habit of moretum, a pounded herb sauce baked between two discs of unleavened bread. Others find similarities in descriptions of chopped herbs crushed between bread in De re coquinaria, a collection of Roman recipes compiled around the fifth century AD. Then there are the numerous mentions – torta de herbe, erbata, herbolata, torta de bieda (from 15th-century manuscripts) – and emotive collective memory of countless homemade variations that were never written down.

One thing is certain, however: erbazzone is now a pillar in the gastronomic culture of Reggio Emilia, and in 2006 a traditional recipe was decided upon and written down – a soft, flour-and-lard pastry around a filling of chard and spinach cooked in a mix of lardo, parsley, garlic and parmigiano reggiano with breadcrumbs, and then topped with lardons, is the recipe protected by the Consorzio dell’Erbazzone Reggiano.

Lard – both lard and lardons – makes a flaky pastry and full flavour; great if you eat pork (there is a version that swaps baking for frying in pork fat). There are also alternative versions, many with no pork at all, such as the one in the Slow Food book Ricette di Osterie d’Italia, which includes eggs. My version is a mixture of all the above.

You’ll need a 30cm x 30cm baking tray. For the pastry, mix

375g plain flour, six tablespoons of

A pillar of gastronomic culture: Rachel Roddy’s picnic pie with greens and parmesan