Pizzoccheri della Valtellina — Buckwheat Pasta with Cheese and Vegetables

Valtellina, Lombardia/Trentino border — pizzoccheri are the defining pasta of the Valtellina valley, produced and eaten in the mountain zone between Sondrio and the Swiss border. The IGP denomination 'Pizzoccheri della Valtellina IGP' protects the preparation.

Pizzoccheri are the buckwheat pasta of the Valtellina — thick, short, flat noodles made from a mixture of buckwheat flour (grano saraceno) and a small amount of white flour, cooked with vegetables (traditionally Savoy cabbage and potato), drained and layered with Bitto DOP (or Valtellina Casera DOP) and butter browned with garlic until the cheese melts through. The buckwheat gives the pasta a dark grey-brown colour and a distinctive nutty, slightly bitter flavour that standard pasta does not have. It is one of the few Italian pasta preparations where the vegetables and cheese are cooked with the pasta rather than applied as a sauce — an Alpine all-in-one preparation.

Pizzoccheri at the table is dark and fragrant — the buckwheat pasta almost grey-brown, the melted Casera white and stringy through the vegetables, the brown garlic butter golden over the top. The flavour is simultaneously nutty (buckwheat), earthy (Casera), sweet (potato and cabbage), and rich (brown butter). It is the most sustaining pasta preparation in the Alpine repertoire.