Figures wearing goggles cut knee-high grass in the park the other day. Like a wasp crossed with a revving motorbike, strimming is a strangely soothing sound. It also takes me back to double chemistry lessons on a June afternoon, the sound and lush smell of the playing field being tamed, drifting in through the window and making my eyes itch.
While it’s closely associated with grass, the Italian word erba is a generic word for a great number of leaf plants and herbs that don’t develop a woody stem. One of those is wild bietola, or chard, and its cultivated cousins, which provide the dense green filling for l’erbazzone reggiano, a savoury pie typical of Reggio Emilia, eponymous city of parmigiano reggiano and one of nine provinces in Emilia-Romagna.
