Pizzoccheri

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