After the Icelandic cassoni — my first experiment — followed by the French and American versions, our Around the World in Eighty Cassoni series takes us to England!
I love England. I have several friends who live there, and I once shared a university flat with a girl from London. As much as I appreciate a good cappuccino and croissant, a proper English breakfast is hard to beat. So, for this new cassone, I decided to bring together some of the best-known ingredients of that generous breakfast.
When it came to making them, though, I faced a terrible dilemma: how do you make really good scrambled eggs?
My mum used to make them when I was little, but they were always rather rubbery and dry, more like a failed omelette than the creamy eggs I had in mind. My friend Ela remembered much the same thing from her childhood: eggs scraped from the bottom of a little pan, not particularly appealing!
Luckily, I remembered a video featuring an actor I absolutely adore. With his unmistakable style and beautiful voice, he demonstrates how to make classic scrambled eggs.
The video is in English, but it is well worth watching and listening to because Ian McKellen is an absolute legend! And I can assure you that his scrambled eggs are excellent. If you don't understand the video, don't worry — the method below explains everything.
For the dough, I used my usual Romagnola piadina recipe, replacing some of the plain flour with rye flour. You can vary the proportions to suit your taste, using up to half rye flour and half plain flour.
English Breakfast Cassoni with Rye Piadina
Recipe
Yield: 6 cassoni
Preparation time: 25 minutes, plus preparing the piadina dough
Resting time: According to your piadina dough recipe
Cooking time: Approximately 25–35 minutes
Total time: Depends on dough preparation, resting and cooking
Ingredients
450 g rye piadina dough, prepared using the linked recipe
4 eggs
3 tablespoons fresh cream
1 generous knob of butter
100 g fresh button mushrooms, sliced
1 garlic clove
12 thin slices of bacon
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
2 tablespoons olive oil
Salt and black pepper, to taste
Method
Divide the dough into six balls and keep them covered with cling film while you prepare the filling.
Make the scrambled eggs. Crack the eggs into a tall-sided saucepan, preferably non-stick, but a regular pan will also work. Add the cream, butter, salt and pepper.
Cook over low heat, stirring continuously. The eggs will gradually begin to set. Once they have formed soft curds, remove the pan from the heat and continue stirring for another couple of minutes. You can leave them softer or firmer, but for cassoni I recommend cooking them until fairly firm so the filling is easier to handle.
Cook the mushrooms. Heat the olive oil in a frying pan with the garlic clove. Add the sliced mushrooms, season with salt and pepper, and cook until tender. Stir in the chopped parsley just before removing them from the heat.
Cook the bacon. Fry the slices until cooked through but not excessively crisp, so they remain flexible enough to fit inside the cassoni.
Roll each dough ball out as thinly as possible. Rye dough can be stickier than ordinary piadina dough, but it should still roll out well.
Place two slices of bacon on each circle, followed by a spoonful of mushrooms and about one and a half spoonfuls of scrambled eggs.
Fold the dough over the filling to make a half-moon. Seal the edges firmly with the tines of a fork.
Cook the cassoni on a hot griddle or heavy-based pan over moderate heat. Rye dough can brown quickly, especially where it is thin, so avoid using excessive heat: the outside should not burn before the thicker, folded edges are cooked through.
Leave the cassoni to rest for about 10 minutes before serving. They are best enjoyed warm.
A note on rye flour
Replacing some of the plain flour with rye gives the piadina dough a deeper flavour that works beautifully with bacon, mushrooms and scrambled eggs. Rye dough can be a little stickier and may brown more quickly, so roll it out carefully and cook the cassoni over moderate heat.
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