Inside this “mountain erbazzone” pie the dominating ingredient is rice, together with the more traditional ingredients of chard, Parmigiano Reggiano cheese and ricotta. Traditionally, young women rice workers called mondine would work in the rice paddies for three months each summer to free the rice plants from weeds before transporting the rice to the Apennines. Erbazzone pie, known in dialect as scarpasun, was once cooked in wooden ovens in a sol – a large, round, traditional mould made from copper with three feet and a revolving handle to allow even cooking.
Ingredients for a 60cm mould
For the filling:
3kg fresh chard
500g ricotta
300g lard
300g grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese
100g grated pecorino cheese
500g rice cooked for 10 minutes in two litres of milk
8 eggs
50g parsley
4 cloves of garlic
nutmeg
salt
Puff pastry
500g flour
150ml milk
oil and salt
Place the garlic, parsley and lard in a frying pan. Blanch the chard in boiling water and then add to the pan together with some herbs. Cook for 15 minutes. Mix the chard from the frying pan with the rice, ricotta, grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, nutmeg and salt to make the filling. Make the puff pastry (known as fuiadà in dialect) with the flour, milk, oil and salt. Pull the pastry to make it thin and then cover the bottom and edges of the mould with it. Pour in the filling in an even layer of approximately one and a half centimetres. Beat a whole egg and pour it onto the surface of the filling to create a film on the surface. Place in a preheated oven and leave to cook for approximately 30 minutes.
No comments yet.