Cooking and Cuisine of Piemonte and Val d'Aosta

[hathor]

I have a question. My husband and I are going to Piemonte this Thursday for 10 days to go skiing, and we are heading up to "Walser" country. Anybody know what sort of dishes are typical for this region? Anything I should be on the lookout for? I've done some research, but I've not come up with much in the way of Walser-specific cuisine.

Thanks.

Edited March 7, 2006 by hathor (log)

[Boris_A]

.. and we are heading up to "Walser" country.

A quite fragmented, transnational culture. Some background here: history.

Fanatastic architecture of solid wood buildings, BTW. They mastered up to 3 stories. By seasonal humidity such a house can shrink or grow by up to 6 inches, hence windows need to be "floating" mounted.

  Anybody know what sort of dishes are typical for this region? Anything I should be on the lookout for?

After googling with "Walser-Küche", I found this page..

Some ingredients are not easy to catch: For example, "Biascht" is the second or third milk of a cow after the birth of a calf. Very creamy and almost yellow. The only literature I found is mentioned there: "Adam Ortwin: Walser Kost für Leib und Seel', Kempten, 1988"

Try more with "Walser Rezepte". German language mandatory, of course.

Happy skiing!

[hathor]

Ah, Boris, I was hoping to hear from you. Jeff will be particularly happy with that bit about the windows, he is a serious architecture buff. Unfortunately, I don't speak any German, so it has limited my ability to do any research. Really looking forward to visiting this special little slice of the world. And I'll report back on the cuisine..as well as being on the look out for recently birthed calves and their mothers. Thanks!

[Adam Balic]

Some ingredients are not easy to catch: For example, "Biascht" is the second or third milk of a cow after the birth of a calf. Very creamy and almost yellow. 

The old English term for the the first milk after calving is 'beestings' or 'beastlyns', odd how similar the words are. A more modern term is 'colostrum'.. The way it was used in England was to dilute it somewhat and warm it to blood temperature, after which it would set to a rich curd.

[hathor]

I'm back in internet land!

Technically we were skiing last week in northern Piemonte, and crossing over into Vallee d’Aoste, but Alagna Valsesia’s heart belongs to Walser culture. I don’t think it really matters what country or region we were in, it was simply the the heart of mountain cuisine. To visualize Alagna, make an ok sign with your thumb and forefinger, pull a handkerchief thru the “O”, Alagna sits tucked at the bottom of the handkerchief. It’s a hidey-hole of a town, nestled in the ravines of the Alps.

The food is plain and solid, lots of simple braises of game meats served on top of brilliant yellow mounds of polenta.

Our favorite restaurant in town was the Unione, a cozy, wood paneled trattoria with communal tables. The antipasti’s being offered were delicious grilled toma with vegetables, or another day, it was a fresh ricotta like cheese that was marinated with fresh herbs and pink peppercorns. Pastas were homemade and typical of all northern Italy, except for the butter and sage sauce which was a thickened green sauce. Grilled horse steak was always offered, but my favorite was either the cervo braised in red wine with lots of juniper or the coniglio humido that was just an outstanding rabbit stew. I’m not much of a desert eater, but my dining partners had chocolate something or other at pretty much every meal. Chocolate is a fine art up there in the mountains. The other popular restaurant in town was “Dir Und Don” which is Walser for here and there, to me it sounded like a doorbell ringing. Dir und Don. Excellent pizzas and grilled meats. They did an interesting thing with the grilled meats, which were done tableside on a small stone grill. They salted the grill stone instead of the meat. I’m not sure if this is a variation on the Italian penchant for tossing out the garlic before serving so the flavor won’t be too pronounced, but overall the salt was just too subtle for me.

Lunches were much more of an adventure. We ate in little rifugios on the mountainside. Some rifugios are just small stone buildings serving only cold sliced meats or just polenta with some sauces, not even pasta (!) in Italy (!) can you imagine??

The usual fare was some pasta al forno, in this case a tender, herb filled canneloni, and cinghiale over polenta, with some mixed grill meats thrown in for a protein fix.

Other rifugios are full service restaurants. One of our favorites is called “Morgenrot”, and here the stand out dish was “Cenefeles Grashopt” and I am sure I have not even come close to spelling this correctly. The ‘grasshoppers’ as we affectionately called them were oversized spaetzle in a butter, sage and spek sauce. All of this was accompanied by a crisp pinot that came from the chef’s vineyard in Bergamot. It wasn’t a pinto grigio, but sounded like pinot blanc?

But our absolute favorite was Stadel Soussun. After our success at finding Morgenrot the day before, we were on the hunt to find another spectacular meal. Jeff, my hungry husband, spied an itsy bitsy sign on the side of the piste, which pointed to an even smaller sign which indicated the restaurant was 200 meters down a narrow snowcat track. What the heck, lets go see where the road leads. About 500 meters down the road, we are all thinking its going to be one long hike back up to the piste if this doesn’t work out. Finally, we come around one last bend and there is a small collection of classic Walser houses with a charming woman asking if we have reservations. No. Well then, would we mind sitting outside? Hell no! It was the most gorgeous setting, blue sky, sunshine, and a narrow rustic table set up just for us. We thought we were being sensible and ordered just some meats to begin, the guys ordered pasta and I asked for the minestrone soup. Then the food began to arrive. A steaming bowl of braised, slightly sweetened chestnuts was set in front of us with instructions to eat it with a piece of lardo, on black bread with a drizzle of honey. What a sublime combination. Grilled wedges of zucchini that were marinated with a sweet red onion came in another bowl. Then our waitress brought out some ‘vegetable cakes’ which were a type of sformato made with vegetables and mushrooms in a cheese sauce. And mixed somewhere in all of this was the prosciutto and speck we had ordered. Oh, and a gorgeous salad of chopped vegetables was thrown in for good luck and color.

The pastas were home made fettucini with a vegetable sauce, and penne with huge, flavorful walnuts. My minestrone soup had lots of sorrel in it and it was was just delicious. Reminder: we still had to face that hike back uphill to the piste. Just as we were starting to really worry about our ability to get back to the piste; Sergio, the owner of Sossun let us know that he would drive us back in the snow cat. Now all was truly right with the world.

So, we retired to the blue lounge chairs to digest and enjoy our time in the mountains. And just to make the experience completely perfect, coffee was delivered to our chairs accompanied by that wicked digestivo ‘genepy’. What the hell is that stuff? All I know is that it induces euphoria and giggles. Its probably illegal in the US. I love genepy!

There was one other place in Alagna that if not euphoric, was pretty close. The Bar Mirella is a pasticceria and cocciolateria. Their ciambelle were the lightest possible pastry, the round cookies were impossibly thin and crunchy with exactly the right bit of sweetness. But it was the chocolate that was truly amazing. It came in all shapes: we’re talking actual size chocolate moka coffee pots with cups and spoons, scenes of Alagna carved into bars, full sized mountain climbing tools, bowls of chocolate nails and then the Easter stuff. Just outstanding work, and by about 9:30 in the morning (hey, I’m not a first tracks girl…) the smell of chocolate in the room would be almost overwhelming.

So, yes we were in Italy, but really we had been welcomed into Walser country and it was a fine place to be.

[azureus]

Hathor, welcome back! What a great trip report. Thanks for sharing your adventures with us. Can you tell us more about the ingredients in the coniglio humido? And I'm really curious about the seeming popularity of horse steaks. Is there a local breed raised just for meat?

April

[hathor]

Ciao Auzureus!

The coniglio tasted like it was a white wine braise with soffrito, lots of garlic and probably some stock. simple, classic dish, but excellently prepared. One of those that require bread for soaking up the extra bits.

As far as the cavallo goes, I'm not really sure if its a specific breed, but more than likely it is. I'm just not a fan of cavallo. Doesn't taste good enough for me to be eating Mr. Ed if you know what I mean. (Obviously I don't have the same issues with eating Bugs Bunny! )

Speaking of breeds, the beef breed from Piemonte is fassone....isn't that usually prepared boiled? We had it grilled one night, and it was rather sinewy.

[Pontormo]

Hathor: It's great to see you back! Thank you for such a generous account of your trip--I love the geography lesson, complete with props and gestures.

As for the food, the chestnuts, boar and sorrel (sorrel in the middle of the winter!!!???) sound wonderful. Everything does. The grill you mention sounds a bit like the fogher illustrated in my old Time/Life book on Italian food. The buttery sage sauce evokes Tuscan (I think) sage pesto. What I'd like to know is if there is a heartier routine at breakfast time in the Alps.

Sigh. The snow looks gorgeous, too. I looked up your drink, genepi, by the way. The name is identical to the acronym for a French association devoted to those incarcerated. However, the digestif is produced from flowers (wormwood...) and plants that bloom and grow in the Alps where they are harvested in August. Each locality has its own special brew. Valle d'Aoste is most closely linked with genepi, but I wonder if Maria's captain was fond of edelweiss for more than its symbolism.

Edited March 24, 2006 by Pontormo (log)

[hathor]

Here is a photo of the mysterious genepy. Yikes! It is wormwood....glacial wormwood. No hallucinations, but we did introduce a friend to it last night, and once again we noticed it produced hillarity. It is supposed to be an excellent digestive and cure for altitude sickness. We had a group taste analysis and came up with pronounced flavor of thyme, some basil, and oregano. Herbaceous you could say!

Pontormo, who is Maria's captain? What am I missing?

[Pontormo]

The man Julie Andrews married after spinning on hills alive with music.

Thanks for showing us the bottles.

[Adam Balic]

Here is a photo of the mysterious genepy. Yikes! It is wormwood....glacial wormwood. No hallucinations, but we did introduce a friend to it last night, and once again we noticed it produced hillarity. It is supposed to be an excellent digestive and cure for altitude sickness. We had a group taste analysis and came up with pronounced flavor of thyme, some basil, and oregano. Herbaceous you could say! 

Pontormo, who is Maria's captain? What am I missing?

←

It is wormwood, an Alpine wormwood (Artemisia genipi, glacialis or mutellina), but it has none of the hallucingetic of the species used in absinth.

This is the French version from my trip to the Dauphine.

[hathor]

Oh well...apparently I'll have to go elsewhere for my hallucinogenics!

It really is a tasty and unusual digestivo.

Pontormo: most of the people I saw eating breakfast where Milanese on vacation. So, it was the usual breakfast of coffee, a cigarette and maybe a pastry. Same ol' same ol'. The only somewhat unusual thing was that you could order a 'cappucino grande', basically a big ol' French cafe au lait.

[Kevin72]

Great writeup, Hathor! Tired as I am of all this rich braised winter food, that all sounds incredible. I love that lunch place you talked about. Those are the kind of places that stick with you.

[Pontormo]

AT LAST, I AM GOING TO BE ABLE TO MAKE CARDOONS NEXT WEEK!!!!!!!!

(Courtesy of one kind farmer at my local Sunday market. )

[hathor]

I'm just catching up....so....what happened with the cardoons, Pontormo??

[Pontormo]

The farmer forgot to bring them to the market this morning !

Heinz felt really bad--really, really bad and promised to bring them next week with some extra for one of the founders of my local market (its 10th year!) who has never cooked them either.

As fate would have it, someone at the mushroom stall gave me three enormous mushrooms just for volunteering. They look a bit like porcini (well not that big), with thick, long stalks and small pale brown caps. I will have to see if Liguria's cuisine does interesting things with mushrooms now that we are about to begin a new month.

I promise to report about the cardoons when I do get my hands on them.

Edited April 30, 2006 by Pontormo (log)

[Pontormo]

The report:

I picked up my cardoons in the parking lot of a bank directly across from the Colombian Embassy. Heinz Thomet, a Swiss vegan farmer, charged me all of $3.50 for a bundle of six enormous stalks. I was thrilled. While I may have passed them by at European markets, I don't recall ever seeing them or eating them before.

They created a stir due to the fact that they looked like celery from Outer Space and did not fit into my basket. I was stopped a couple of times by curious patrons; I had a chat with a chef and his friend who spoke of candying cardoons (a French dish) and boiling them and eating them with beef marrow.

After sitting on my dining room table while I read the paper, the leaves of the cardoons shriveled and grew limp, the stalks, pliant, bad signs both. Upon cleaning them, I learned why the farmer told me he felt a Meditterranean climate was necessary for the plant to thrive. These were extremely fibrous with roomy hollow spaces running through the entire length of the stalks. So I cut them in half and set them upright in water in the fridge for a few days to firm up.

Raw, they were extremely bitter until I took a paring knife and severely eliminated all the ribs, or approximately a third of their weight. I was surprised by how sweet the flesh was, if virtually tasteless.

Despite initial disappointment, after boiling for eight minutes in highly salted water the slices of cardoon tasted EXACTLY LIKE ARTICHOKES if more delicate. They were actually delicious and I should have stopped then and there when they were still a little firm. However, I let them boil four more minutes and by then, the pronounced flavor fled.

I turned them into Mario Batali's sformati di cardi. The recipe's in Molto Italiano. They were lovely little things plated with snipped chives, chive flowers as purple as cardoon blossoms, and bright pink roasted rhubarb. If you are ever tempted to make the recipe I'd recommend using Vidalia vs. MB's beloved red onions; a more delicate, sweet flavor would be preferable. I also would leave out the ricotta cheese since the grainy cheese in a flan made it seem as if the egg had curdled. I did like the effect of the big, soft chunks of cardoon and onion in the sformati, though. Having read about how bland such white food is, the added texture challenged expectations.

[azureus]

Raw, they were extremely bitter until I took a paring knife and severely eliminated all the ribs, or approximately a third of their weight.  I was surprised by how sweet the flesh was, if virtually tasteless.

Despite initial disappointment, after boiling for eight minutes in highly salted water the slices of cardoon tasted EXACTLY LIKE ARTICHOKES if more delicate.  They were actually delicious and I should have stopped then and there when they were still a little firm.  However, I let them boil four more minutes and by then, the pronounced flavor fled.

I turned them into Mario Batali's sformati di cardi.  The recipe's in Molto Italiano.  They were lovely little things plated with snipped chives, chive flowers as purple as cardoon blossoms, and bright pink roasted rhubarb.  If you are ever tempted to make the recipe I'd recommend using Vidalia vs. MB's beloved red onions; a more delicate, sweet flavor would be preferable.  I also would leave out the ricotta cheese since the grainy cheese in a flan made it seem as if the egg had curdled.  I did like the effect of the big, soft chunks of cardoon and onion in the sformati, though.  Having read about how bland such white food is, the added texture challenged expectations.

←

Thanks for your report! Success at last! I'm now encouraged to try cardoons again this summer. Obviously, your success shows that I didn't remove enough strings when I prepared mine last year. Your sformati sound wonderful. I wonder if a soft goat cheese would give a smoother texture? (And hopefully taste good without overpowering the other flavors.)

So, on to Bagna Caoda next?

April

[Adam Balic]

One of the local poncy stores in Edinburgh are selling these preserved (sardinian) wild cardoons as an anti-pasto. Quite nice really.

[Pontormo]

Adam: I'm gormless. Does "poncy" mean "fancy"? Were the cardoons simply boiled and bottled or is there something a bit more interesting in the Sardinian preparation? (I guess these sort of make up for the deep-fried pizza of Scotland.)

[hathor]

Sformato di cardoon! What a great idea!

Thanks for the play by play account. I particularly like the "I picked them up across the street from the Colombian embassy"...sounds like the opening line to a thriller novel/ The exotic cardoons peeping out of the bag...well done!

I have to find some and join the carddon challenge.

[Pontormo]

Cardoon sformati are not just in Batali's cookbook. Roberto Donna likes them as does Matt Kramer, so it really must be a Piemontese thing even though I find that sformati are made in a number of Italian regions, including Tuscany.

I must say that leftovers were even better than the originals, if not as attractive re-heated. The flavors merged and the ricotta no longer seemed off-putting, nor the red onion dominant. More importantly, I found how good different toppings were as foils...or vice versa.

The toasted (well, butter-sauteed, even better) breadcrumbs and grated cheese Batali prefers were fabulous, especially with the crunchy texture contrasting with the soft food the toothless might enjoy. The tomato sauce from a chicken dish was wonderful as was market asparagus, blanched and sauteed with pancetta and shallots.

[Adam Balic]

Cardoon sformati is very common throughout the countryside in Northern Italy. Basically, at certain points of the year the only plants that are growing in the veg plots are cardoons and black kale. Obviously, in more urbanised regions it's importance is reduced.

Another issue is that there are dilect names for the veg. and this means that recipes etc are harder to recognise. In Tuscany they are called "gobbi ", which I think means "Hunchback".

[SWISS_CHEF]

Went to a friend's house in Cossombrato and his dear old mother made a fritata with Erba di San Pietro or Costmary in English.

Served warm, we were told to drizzle a tiny bit of very mild locally made vinegar over it.

It was the best dish I have had this year, hands down. I had three helpings and made her promise to take me into the kitchen and show me how to make it when I go back.

I will report back and take photos.

[hathor]

Sounds good. Would love to have the recipe!

We were in Orvieto this week, at I Sette Consoli, and they had an herb type fritatta that was delicious, but could have used a little bite of something acidic.