Flat Bread---Piadine

A simple Italian flat bread, ideal for the barbecue season, quick to make and a great alternative to soft bread buns. The basic recipe below can be adapted to include herbs, garlic, chilli, shallots or bacon etc to add interesting flavours or extra texture to the breads.

350g Plain flour
10g Salt
30ml olive oil
100-110ml Luke warm water.



Simply place the flour, oil and salt into a bowl.

Add most of the water and mix everything together by hand to form a soft ball of dough. If the dough seems dry then add a little more water to it to make the soft ball. Adding too much water will give a dough that is too sticky to roll.

Turn the dough out onto the work top and knead for about 5 minutes to give a smooth, well mixed dough.

Lightly oil a bowl, place the dough into it, cover with cling film and set aside to rest for about 20 minutes.

When the dough has tested, heat a griddle or heavy bottomed frying pan/ skillet ready for use.

Divide the dough into about 12 equal pieces, lightly flour the work top.

Take each piece of dough and using your hands, knead it gently,up into a ball. Roll out thinly to approx 12-15cm.

Lightly oil the griddle/pan and place the rolled dough disk onto it. leave for about 2 minutes to brown, turn over and cook on until both sides have browned.

The Piadine is now ready to enjoy and is at its best warm and freshly made. They can be kept warm for a short time, or frozen for later use but do then lose a little of their character.

Enjoy.

BBQ

A great day out at a local country fest, with a heavy emphasis on food, where we really enjoyed a good look around and some good tasting sessions. Really good to catch with old friends and to talk to the producers who give us so much pleasure. Having been such a hot day what better way than a BBQ to sample some of produce with friends too.

The first outing this year for the fire starter, a great device for starting the charcoal or briquettes with. Just stuff some paper into the base, top with some old coals and then fill with new ones, place over the base shelf and light. Leave this until you have red hot glowing coals, pour over the BBQ base and you can begin to cook, simple and effective, but we are yet to decide the best paper to use, a midweek or weekend one, a broadsheet or tabloid, the jury is still out!

We were lucky enough to have purchased some racks of ribs, traditional, sweet chilli and peri-peri, along with a coarse Cumberland sausage, pork and chive sausage, Springbok burgers and Kangaroo burger, certainly something a little different.

The ribs were sealed off and cooked in a rack, then when nicely browned, wrapped in foil and returned to a cooler area of the BBQ, whilst the sausage and burgers were cooked over the coals. Everything remained moist and juicy with excellent flavour, the Springbok and Kangaroo were certainly powerfully surprising and to be recommended as a great alternative to the usual offerings. The ribs were juicy, tender and well flavoured, offering a selection for everyone and keeping us happy as we ate them by hand, giving us the opportunity to lick our fingers clean afterwards too! These meats all came from Shaw meats in Wigton, check them out at www.shawmeats.co.uk