Name: Pizzoccheri (Buckwheat Tagliatelle Layered with Potatoes, Cabbage, and Cheese)
Yield: Serves 6 to 8 as a first course, 4 to 6 as a main course
Cuisine: Italian
Ingredients: ⅔ water; you may need 2 or 3 more tablespoons; 8 ounces savoy cabbage, leaves separated and cut into long thin strips; Salt; 1 cup (4 ounces) freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese; 8 ounces waxy boiling potatoes, peeled and cut in walnut-sized chunks; Freshly ground black pepper; At least 4 quarts water; Salt (optional); 1¾ sticks (7 ounces) best-quality unsalted butter; About 6 to 8 garlic cloves, slivered; 1 pound dried pizzoccheri pasta imported from Italy (See Source Guide to Ingredients); 2 cups (8 ounces) diced young bitto, Montasio, or fontina cheese; 1 cup (about 7 ounces) unbleached all-purpose flour; 2 cups (10 ounces) buckwheat flour; 1 egg; 1 tablespoon coarse salt; A few leaves of fresh sage, tom into pieces (optional)

Preparation info

Serves
6 to 8
as a first course

Difficulty
Medium

Appears in

In Nonna's Kitchen

By Carol Field

Published 1997

About

Pizzoccheri are dark and dappled slightly nutty-tasting tagliatelle made of buckwheat in the Valtellina, the mountainous area of Lombardy that arcs across a broad valley just above the northern end of Lake Como. When Lina Vitali was growing up in the tiny town of Montagna in the 1920s, she made pizzoccheri daily with her grandmother; and Esther Saini, now a white-haired grandmother, could already turn them out alone when she was twelve. Lina introdu