Pizzoccheri

To go with the round-up of wines from Valtellina, here’s a detailed recipe for this typical local dish. This is perfect with a glass of Valtellinese wine.

Pizzoccheri is a rustic meal, hearty and filling. It simply comprises buckwheat pasta, cheese, potatoes and greens. The appeal lies in the contrast between the key ingredients and how these add-up to a whole that is much greater than the sum of its parts. As with all such things it depends for its quality on good fresh ingredients.

It’s not difficult to make, but some time will be needed to source the various bits and pieces you need. The key component is the buckwheat pasta, also known as Pizzoccheri, plus Italian mountain cheeses. Everything else can be readily found.

First, the pasta. You might get lucky in an Italian deli and find some dried Pizzoccheri; otherwise you’ll have to make your own. Here’s a recipe with quantities for 6 people:

Pizzoccheri are made with mostly buckwheat flour. On its own this is tough to work with, so maybe a third by weight should be normal pasta flour. In a bowl mix 250 g buckwheat flour and 125 g pasta flour. Mix in 2 whole eggs, 2 tablespoons milk, and half a teaspoon each of salt & black pepper.

Form a ball of dough and knead for 8 – 10 minutes until smooth. Buckwheat is low in gluten, so the pasta will never become as elastic and springy as a normal wheat pasta dough. As you knead, adjust the consistency with either more flour or more milk. You want a firm dough which is soft enough to take a firm kneading, and which isn’t dry. Once this is done cover the dough and leave it to rest in the fridge for at least half an hour.

A pasta machine to roll-out and cut the dough helps the next stage, but isn’t essential. Divide the dough into 3 or 4 pieces. Using either the pasta machine or a rolling pin, roll-out the dough to a rough thickness of maybe 2 mm. On my pasta roller this is the 2nd or 3rd thinnest setting. Then cut into long ribbons about 1cm wide and cut each ribbon into short 2-3 cm lengths. The well-floured pasta can now be covered and stored until you want it.

For the remainder of the dish you’ll need:

3 medium sized Potatoes
2 cloves Garlic
Couple of Sage leaves
Half a Savoy Cabbage cut into pieces 1 cm by 3 cm
200 g Butter
Salt & Pepper
85 g grated Parmesan
250 g northern Italian mountain cheese* cut into thin slices.

*The cheeses for this dish are usually the local Bitto and/or Casera. These may be tough to find in the UK. The key thing is that you want cheese that will readily melt and give a good, but not overpowering, cheesy quality to the dish. Fontina works well and is more easily found. I went to the marvellous La Fromagerie, off Marylebone High Street, where I tasted a range of Italian cheeses and came away with some Toma Maccagno and Caciotta Etrusca, the former for cheesy flavour and the latter for melting unctuousness.

Preheat the oven to 220°C. Peel the spuds and boil until done. Slice them so you have pieces 1 cm thick and quite small. Put these into a sauté pan with plenty of olive oil and slowly fry until golden crispy and soft inside. For the last couple of minutes add the finely chopped garlic and sage. Put all to one side.

Fill a large pasta pan with water and bring to the boil. The pasta and the cabbage are cooked together, and how you do this will be decided by whether you are using fresh or dried pasta. The cabbage will need 5 minutes in the water, fresh pasta 2 minutes or dried pasta 10 minutes or so. So put pasta and cabbage in the boiling water in the right order and for the right length of time so they are both done at the same finishing time, bearing all that in mind!

Drain. Put the butter in the drained pasta pan and melt. Add the pasta/cabbage and season really well – the finished dish should be quite peppery. Combine.

In a well-buttered ovenproof dish, make layers starting with pasta/cabbage, then a few spud bits, then cheese. Repeat until all is gone and finish with cheese. This goes in the oven for 10 minutes, just to melt the cheese.

Click here for a video recipe!

Serve with a simple green salad. The pasta should be earthy and slightly chewy, there should be a good oozy cheese thing going on and you should feel slightly guilty about the amount of delicious dairy fat being consumed! Lovely.

Andy Leslie