Recipe
Piadina with hummus, roasted carrots, and rocket
The piadina is the flatbread of Romagna, it is considerably older than pizza, and it is sold from small painted kiosks at the side of the road in a way that suggests a civilisation which has thought seriously about lunch.
The kiosks are called chioschi, they run in a more or less unbroken line between Rimini and Ravenna, they are striped like beach huts, staffed by exactly one person, and open at hours that make sense to human beings. The piadina itself is flour, water, salt and fat, cooked on a flat plate for ninety seconds a side. It has held protected geographical status since 2014, which means the European Union has formally taken a position on it.
What makes it useful in a book about carrying food is that it is the only bread-adjacent thing that does not go soggy. A sandwich built at 20:00 is a wet tragedy by 13:00 the following day, because bread is an open sponge and the fillings are mostly water. A piadina is dense and slightly fatty and it simply holds. Fold it, wrap it in paper, and fourteen hours later it is still a piadina.
Hummus is not Romagnolo in any sense and I am not going to pretend otherwise. It is here because it does the job that squacquerone, the local soft cheese, does in the traditional version: it glues everything together and stops the filling making a break for your lap. It also keeps a week and costs nothing to make from a tin of chickpeas.
Roast the carrots hard, with cumin, until the edges catch. Raw carrot in a wrap is a texture nobody has ever enjoyed. Roasted, it goes sweet and slightly chewy and can hold its own against the hummus.
Rocket at the last possible moment, always, and a squeeze of lemon.
- Prep 15 min
- Cook 25 min
- Serves 2
- Cost €
Method
- 1
Heat the oven to 220°C fan. Toss the carrot batons with the cumin, 2 tbsp of the oil and plenty of salt, and roast until the edges are dark and the carrots are sweet.
25 min
- 2
Blend the chickpeas, tahini, garlic, lemon juice, oil and a good pinch of salt until smooth, loosening with the chickpea liquid a spoon at a time. Keep going past the point where it looks done.
5 min
- 3
Warm the piadine for 30 seconds a side in a dry pan. A cold piadina cracks when you fold it; a warm one does not.
2 min
- 4
Spread the hummus over each piadina, right to the edges, which is what stops the filling escaping.
2 min
- 5
Lay the roasted carrots down the middle, add the rocket, squeeze over the lemon, and grind on black pepper.
2 min
- 6
Fold in half, then wrap tightly in greaseproof paper and cut through the paper on the diagonal.
2 min
Variations
Roasted beetroot, pumpkin or peppers in place of carrots. A handful of olives or sun-dried tomatoes adds salt. Squacquerone, stracchino or feta is the traditional cheese route and loses the vegan flag. Add falafel or leftover roasted chickpeas for a heavier wrap. Shop-bought hummus is a perfectly honourable shortcut. The hummus and the carrots both keep 4 days, so Sunday's roasting tray becomes three lunches.