The Alps and the Dolomites

The Italian Alps form the northern boundary of the peninsula, running from the Valle d'Aosta in the north-west through Piemonte, Lombardia and the Veneto to Friuli in the east, and enclosing the Trentino-Alto Adige, whose Dolomite ranges give the region much of its character. Valentina Harris treats these northern territories in The Italian Regional Cookbook as cooking shaped by altitude, long winters and proximity to France, Switzerland and Austria, so that the table owes as much to its neighbours as to the rest of Italy.

The cooking of the Alpine arc is a cooking of the mountain pasture and the cold season. Where the land rises, the olive and the vine give way to pasture, forest and small high fields, and the principal products are those of the dairy, the smokehouse and the cellar: cow's milk cheeses, cured and smoked pork and beef, rye and buckwheat, potatoes, cabbage and the produce of the woods. Harris presents the northern regions as places where food had to keep through the winter, and where butter, cream and lard take the place of the olive oil of the south. The Valle d'Aosta, closest to France and Switzerland, is the home of fontina, the cheese of the high pastures, which Harris associates with the region's fondue-like preparations and with hearty soups of bread, cabbage and cheese baked together. Its cooking is the most Alpine of Italy's, built on cheese, rye bread, game and the cured meats of the valleys, with polenta eaten alongside in the manner of neighbouring Lombardia and Piemonte. The Trentino-Alto Adige is a region of two traditions. The Trentino, in the south, is Italian in language and leans towards polenta, river and lake fish, and the produce of its orchards and vineyards. The Alto Adige, or Südtirol, was long part of the Austrian lands and keeps a Germanic table: dumplings of bread, called canederli or Knödel, speck, sauerkraut, rye breads, strudels and the sweet pastries of central Europe. Harris notes that the two halves share mountains but not a kitchen, and that the visitor passes from one culinary world to another within a short distance. In Friuli, to the east, the Alpine foothills meet the Adriatic plain, and the influence of the Austro-Hungarian and Slavic lands is added to the mountain tradition. Cured pork, notably the hams of the region, together with soups, polenta and cheeses made on the high pastures, make up the core of the table, and the cooking of the uplands differs plainly from that of the coast below. Across the whole arc, the unifying elements are the use of preservation, the dominance of dairy fat, and a cooking that favours substance and warmth. The Dolomites themselves, with their long winters and short summers, explain why the dishes are filling, built from a few keeping ingredients, and why the cheeses, breads and cured meats of the region hold the place that fresh vegetables and olive oil hold further south.

The flavour of the Alpine table is one of smoke, milk fat and fermented or preserved foods: smoked and cured pork, aged mountain cheeses, rye and buckwheat, cabbage and potato. The effect is of richness and warmth rather than brightness, and it is tempered by the acidity of sauerkraut, the sweetness of orchard fruit and the sharper white and red wines of the northern vineyards.