Romagna's Piadina

available in all Romagna region during all over the year

A miscellaneous of flour, water, melted, salt, bicarbonate or yeast, taut by hand in form of a disk and cooked in round and flat plate of terracotta or stone refrettaria.
It’s the image of Romagna. It’s used with the most varied accompaniments: sweets or salty, meats, greengroceries, cheeses or fish. A greedy combining?
Piadina, squaquerone (a kind of cheese) and candied fig trees. A sweet version of it exists also.
The origin of piadina are secular and, above all, poor. It is born in fact as bread without yeast, preparation common to so many ancient civilizations starting from the Jewish bread. Perhaps for its humble origins, it is not used by great chefs like Artusi and Stecchetti, but the missed quote remains a serious gap.
Except for the ingredients and the technique of cooking, the piadina distinguishes from zone to zone of Romagna for dimensions and thickness: smaller and big toward the mountains, greater and thin toward the sea. Pleasant also the crescionis, refolded versions. Traditionally the stuffing is constituted by greengroceries called crescione.

Hand-maded Pasta

The "amnëstra" is the banner of the gastronomic tradition of Romagna. With or without eggs, often manufactured starting from pulling it by hand with the rolling-pin (" s-ciadù "), it’s then handly cutted in various forms one to one. It’s different from zone to zone for dimensions and ingredients of the stuffings, tightly following customs to the availability of the ingredients themselves. It’s eaten dry, seasoned with meat sauce, or in a good broth of meat, even of capon. It’s original the particular taste the chestnut tortellis or " turtlèz ", filled with boiled chestnut , cocoa and spice, seasoned with oil, parmesan cheese and pepper. The seasonings of dry pastas is mainly based on pig meat, wich is of great importance in the country culture of Romagna. The ingredients of a good romagnola meat sauce are: farm chicken and a part of steer, toasted in a beaten of celery, carrot and onion, vanished with a good white wine, cooked with a little addition of tomato. The cappelletto romagnolo, cooked in a good broth of capon, it foresees the use of only cheese in the stuffing.

Raviggiolo, Casatella, Squaquerone

Fresh cheeses, produced with bovine milk, tender pasta and white color. They have to be consumed within few days from the outturn, especially raviggiolo and squaquerone,. The squaquerone is shapeless and grainy, with delicate and sweet taste, proper to be smeared on the piadina, even with a good jam. The raviggiolo is more consistent. Once it was produced with goat milk and the curd deposited on leaves of cabbage or fern. You can combine it with polenta or use it for the stuffing of the " spoja lorda", pasta to be cooked in broth formed by small lozenges of skims. The casatella has a duration an a little longer, it is produced with bovine milk and looks like a small caciotte.

Aromatic spices

thyme, santoreggia, marjoram, rosemary, sage-green, parsley, issopo, tarassaco, mint, silene, origan, melissa, mountain celery, garden-cress,...

Picked up in the lowland and in mountain during the whole year according to the kind. The Herbs Garden of Casola Valsenio is a center of studies, searches and diffusion of herbs. It works with perennial or annual plants, cultivated or present in nature to the wild state, with leaves, flowers or particularly aromatic roots, you use in medicine, cosmetic and gastronomy.

Castrato

Meat with definite taste, tender and juicy, sharp odor and, from raw, red color I live with to read striations of white adipose fabric. The chop thigh, flavored with a beaten of garlic and rosemary, crushed to the grate together with red tomatoes is one of the seconds for excellence of the gastronomy romagnola. The breeding of the sheep comes from Byzantine influences, culture in which the sheep had a greater importance then other animals.

Romagna's Scalogno

It’s picked up on July, and it is cultivated in the town of Riolo Terme, Brisighella, Casola Valsenio, Castel Bolognese, Modigliana, Tredozio, Borgo Tossignano, Casalfiumanese, Castel del Rio. It’s a cipolin bulb, with characteristics both of the onion that of the garlic and of the leek. The most traditional preparation wants it as the main ingredient of a meat sauce with shallot, raw ham and tomato. This sauce it’s used to season some handly made noodles, holds and enough thick.

Black & White Truffles

It’s picked up all over the Appennino, till about 600 mt. of highness. Most appreciated varieties, are given between September and March

The white truffle, very perfumed and rare, has the form of little balls, which value increases according with dimensions. The black varieties are qualitatively inferior. It’s better to consume it within few days from the harvest, since it easily decays. The white truffle must be consumed raw, adding it to the pasta, meat, eggs, potatoes just before to eat them. The black variety, needs instead a brief cooking to give the best. A simple but savory dish, combines truffle with eggs: after you have cooked your scrambled-eggs, you add the white truffle in flakes, then wait for 5 minutes before serving.

Romagna's Trebbiano Wine

From grapes picked on the hills between the provinces of Bologna, Ravenna, Forlì - Cesena and Rimini

White wine, dry, sapid, harmonic, clear yellow color. It can be lightly sparkling. Trebbiano is a very good aperitif, better with fish dishes. Very good even if associated with fresh cheese, lightly salty or sweet. Trebbiano is a white grape very popular and cultivated all over Italy and less in Spain. Trebbiano’s must is the base for that extraordinary product that’s the Modena’s Balsamic Vinagre.

Romagna's Cagnina DOC Wine

It’s producted from grapes, picked up in Ravenna, Forlì and Cesena. It’s solded very soon, around 20th - 25 of October, before the new wines. Red wine, purple coloured, sweet taste, sometimes a little tannic and lightly acidulous. For its chemical characteristic it isn’t a long-lived wine. Anyway even if in Romagna it is considered an autumnal wine, in the rest of Italy, it’s very appreciateeven from young people as a red and pleasant sweet wine, all over the year. It’s good with cakes, pastry, roasted chestnuts.

Romagna's Albana DOCG Wine

White wine, dry taste, often sweetish, lightly acidulous, full-bodied, light-yellow and often golden coloured. Sweet albana remembers nuts. Dry kind is associated to fish, expecially soups, white meats, broths. Sweetish kind is associated pastry and fruit cakes. Together with Sangiovese, Albana is a symbol of Romagna, the first white wine to have the DOCG mark. We can’t forget raisin Albana, obtained from grapes dryed on plants, a great meditation wine, with a very strong apricot taste.

Romagna's Sangiovese Wine

It’s producted from grapes picked in the provinces of: Bologna, Ravenna, Forlì - Cesena. The Sangiovese Superiore, produced in a narrow hilly area of Romagna, it can’t be less alcoholic than 12° and it can’t be putted in commerce before the first of April of the year that followes the vintage. The Sangiovese Riserva has to have at least 2 months of aging. A version "new " also exists of it. Wine from the dry taste, good acidity, with a certain tannicity, pleasantly bitterish, lightly intensity red rubied colored. It’s a classical meat wine, appetizers, damp, roasted meat. Also married to some fishes, cooked on the grate or particularly fat, and traditional first dishes. Ideal with soft and fermented cheeses. Sangiovese is the symbol of the Corporation for the Protection of Romagna’s Wines, the producers' consortium risen in 1967 with the purpose to protect and valorize the Wines of Romagna and to watch over on the DOCs.