Imola (Emilia Romagna) 2024

 As the race season is starting to become interesting, we move to Italy for delicious snacks.

Careful not to duplicate ideas that we'll use for Monnza later in the year, I took charge with the selection and then made Heidi do all the work. But Tally decided this weekend she wanted to spend all her time with me (aware that Heidi and I are away next weekend), so she too had some fun in the kitchen.

Heidi made Tigelle. Little pan-fried breads, suitable for holding a morsel of cured meat or cheese, while you caress and cold glass of wine in the other hand.

The dough mix is similar to most breads, except to use pasta grade flour (I doubt Italians know much else) and lard instead of any butter.

We probably left it longer than ideal to rise and hence cut down the proving time, but it didn't seem to matter. It was altogether fun to see these little cushions swell on the pan.

Tally claims this is the only one of the snacks so far that she likes - perhaps because she got involved. Heidi packed her school lunch early with the leftovers, before anyone else could argue. Sounds like a success to me.

Why would you be taking photos?

It's quite a wet dough

Pan fried on the griddle (pancake pan) without the lid worked best, though slower

Serve with favourite goodies

Assembled to our own preferences

And to add to the fuss in the kitchen Tally wanted to make a fruit salad and animate it (play with sound on).

Recipe

Ingredients

400g pasta '00' flour

7g yiest

150ml water

150ml milk

15g sugar

1 tsp salt

20g lard - does anyone have a use for the other 480g in the packet?

Method

1. Mix like any other bread recipe
2. Knead it in the mixer
3. Leave it to rise
4. Kock it down, roll it out to 5-7mm thick, cut 8cm circles - the fun bit
5. Leave to prove
6. Dry/very shallow fry on a flat griddle pan
7. Leave to cool a bit before slicing open.
8. Fill it with delightful cold stiff, but don't (definitely don't do this) fill yourself at 20 minutes before Mummy has prepared a roast chicken for dinner.