Pizzoccheri
Today, I am going to share with you a very classic pasta dish that you might not have heard of, it is a dish from the mountainous Valtellina valley, one of the northernmost areas of Italy, where it gets so cold that it can be hard to tell where Italy ends and Switzerland begins.
It makes sense that in such a cold that hearty dishes are a necessity to help fill you up and warm you up during the harsh winter months, and one of them is a unique pasta dish that is served with potatoes, cabbage and cheese known as Pizzoccheri. One thing that makes Pizzoccheri unique from most classic pasta dishes is the fact that it uses a special type of ribbon pasta made from buckwheat flour. Even now when most of buckwheat production has been moved to Poland, it is still a dish that Valtellina citizens go nuts for.
Note: The authentic version of this recipe calls for a cheese local to the region called Valtellina Casera DOP, a cheese made with a mix of whole cow’s milk and raw goat’s milk and has a sweet and delicate flavor. Now, as one might imagine, Valtellina Casera is a bit harder to find the farther you get from the valley, so a few good substitutes would be fontina, Gruyere or Emmental.
The dish does cease to be an authentic recipe, but it is still delicious. I promise you that an Italian grandmother won’t come knocking at your door if you go down this route.
Serves 6-8 large portions
Difficulty: Intermediate
For the Pasta:
14 oz of finely ground buckwheat flour
3 1/2 oz of 00 flour or all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 to 1 1/4 cups of water
For the Sauce:
1/2 pound of potatoes, peeled and cut into 1 1/2-inch cubes
1/2 pound of savoy cabbage, roughly shredded
7 tablespoons of unsalted butter
2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
9 oz of shredded Valtellina Casera DOP (See above for substitutes)
3 1/2 ounces of grated parmigiano reggiano
Make the pasta: Combie the flours and salt together in a medium bowl, then add 1 cup of water. Stir until you get a dough that isn’t crumbly but also doesn’t stick to your fingers, adding more water if needed. The neat part about this pasta dough is that it does not need to rest.
Use a rolling pin or pasta roller to roll the dough into a 1/4-inch thickness, then cut into 1/4 inch wide ribbons, or about the size of tagliatelle.
To make the sauce, place the potatoes into a pot of salted water, then bring that to a boil. Let the potatoes cook for about 5 minutes before adding the cabbage. Let the potatoes and cabbage cook together for another 5 minutes, or until the potatoes are just tender, then add the pasta and cook for about 3 minutes, or until the pasta is cooked.
Melt the butter in a wide frying pan with the sliced garlic, then cook over medium-low heat until the garlic is golden, but certainly not burnt, set that aside for a moment.
(The classic way to finish this dish is to pile up the pasta mixture with the garlic butter and cheese onto a hot serving platter, but this is how I like to do it.)
When the pasta is cooked, drain and add that to the pan with the hot garlic butter, then toss to combine. Sprinkle on both cheeses, then place everything under the broiler until the cheese is bubbly and melted.
