Pizzoccheri: Italy's debated buckwheat pasta recipe

Chiara Lanzarotti remembers when "everyone was a farmer" in the small town of Teglio.

"It's still like a postcard," Lanzarotti said, pointing her cane to the south side of Italy's Valtellina valley, surrounded by the Orobie Alps, which are snow-speckled, even in mid-July.

Lanzarotti's maternal ancestors, the Tusetti's, settled in Teglio on Valtellina's north side – 16km south of the Italian-Swiss border in Lombardy and 900m above sea level – in the 1600s, and cultivated buckwheat, a traditional food staple for farmers tending their terraced mountain crops. Flour ground from the plant's triangular seeds, grano saraceno in Italian, or furmentùn in Valtellina's dialect, was central to a hearty tagliatelle-style pasta dish called pizzoccheri, which was topped with vegetables like cabbage and potatoes, as well as cheese and butter, which fuelled them from dawn to dusk.

While it's hard to know when the dish was first made, in the 1799 book Die Republik Graubündent (The Republic of Graubünden), German historian Heinrich L Lehmann wrote about a "perzockel" dough made from buckwheat flour and egg, which was cooked in water and served with butter and grated cheese. Lehmann noted that farmers living in small homes would also use this same dough to make a simpler, gnocchi dish as they didn't always have the luxury of time or space to roll and cut the dough into flat tagliatelle noodles.

By the end of the 1800s, there were 5,000 acres of buckwheat cultivated in Valtellina. Today, however, only 50 acres are farmed, primarily in Teglio. Buckwheat production declined drastically with the rise of industrialisation in the 1950s and was replaced by more lucrative crops like wheat, which was substituted for some of the buckwheat flour used for making pizzoccheri.

Around that time, the Lanzarotti's, too, stopped growing buckwheat on their Teglio land. However, their restaurant, Ai Tigli, run by Lanzarotti's son, Roberto Scínetti, continues to make pizzoccheri and is one of 10 Teglio restaurants recognised by a consortium for serving what some claim to be the "authentic" version of the dish. Founded in 2002 by Scínetti along with two dozen other chefs, farmers and residents, the Accademia del Pizzochero di Teglio (Teglio Pizzocchero Academy) had determined that the official Pizzoccheri di Teglio recipe must include pasta made from 75% buckwheat flour, 25% wheat flour and water. (It also stipulates that pizzoccheri pasta should be 5mm wide, 7-8cm long, and 2-3mm thick.)

"Gnocchi and tagliatelle pasta is made from buckwheat and water and topped with cabbage, cheese and potatoes – depending on the seasonal harvest"

However, this recipe is a point of debate, as many locals have traditionally only used buckwheat flour to make the dish. Giancarla Maestroni, a Teglio historian and former university professor and middle school teacher, considers buckwheat-only pizzoccheri to be more "original", as the first recorded recipes didn't include wheat flour. As botanist Giuseppe Filippo Massara wrote in 1834, "Gnocchi and tagliatelle pasta is made from buckwheat and water and topped with cabbage, cheese and potatoes – depending on the seasonal harvest." Massara's description is similar to Maestroni's family recipe.

When she was a teacher in the early 2000s, Maestroni had her students interview their parents and grandparents about the legacy of buckwheat farming in Valtellina, and then spent the next 20 years investigating historical records about grano saraceno cultivation in the area.

"I was curious to know when buckwheat arrived here, from where, why, and why people started to cultivate it," explained Maestroni, who traced her Teglio roots and buckwheat cultivation on her maternal Reghenzani side to the 1600s.

Though a report published in 2014 by professors from the University of Florence in partnership with Italian and European agricultural associations, Maestroni learned that seeds for Valtellina's first buckwheat fields likely came from Russia in the 1400s, after Mongolian invaders brought them from Yunnan, China. Buckwheat easily took root in the region as it was ideally suited to grow in its rocky alpine terrain. In 1616, the governor of what was then called Valle dell'Adda wrote that heidenkorn (buckwheat) was the main crop, and by 1830, the Valtellinese milled more than 1,800 tons of buckwheat per year.

Now, relatively little buckwheat is grown in Teglio, and two major Teglio-based commercial mills – Filippini and Tudori – process buckwheat seeds from Eastern Europe and sell the resulting flour to supermarkets and restaurants, including Ai Tigli. Five independent producers still cultivate and grind buckwheat flour in Teglio, but without the benefit of mass production, their prices are nearly double that of Filippini and Tudori, and thus, they are an unsustainable option for Teglio businesses.

Maestroni argues that the addition of wheat to the pizzoccheri recipe has altered the quality and taste of the dish, resulting in the loss of an important culinary tradition. "You notice the buckwheat more," Maestroni said of buckwheat-only pizzoccheri. "They taste better."

Flavour aside, there are practical advantages to using wheat flour in pizzoccheri dough. Gluten from the wheat acts as an adhesive, increasing the pasta's durability; buckwheat-only mixtures can be more delicate and need to be cooked immediately before they fall apart, Scínetti explained. Adding wheat to the dough also supports mass production, creating a more stable pasta that can be dried and cooked later.

Despite the success and ubiquity of the wheat-inclusive Pizzoccheri di Teglio recipe, interest in buckwheat-only pasta has recently resurfaced. Scínetti, who follows the Academy's recipe at Ai Tigli, started rolling pizzoccheri dough with only buckwheat flour about five years ago when customers asked for a gluten-free version of the dish. Since all his pasta is made-to-order, durability isn't an issue, and he doesn't mind making another version for the restaurant.

"It's a simple recipe," he explained, as he combined water with buckwheat flour, kneaded the dough on a marble countertop and rolled it into thin disks like his grandmother taught him to do when he was 15 years old. Although his nonna used a wooden pastry board over a kitchen table, the technique is the same, he says. After rolling the dough in preparation to make thin strips of pizzoccheri, he cuts it into two rectangles, stacks them and then cuts the dough into dozens of thin strips. He immediately cooks the pasta, along with boiled potatoes and cabbage from the family's garden, and tops it all with a mixture of local Casera cheese and garlic-infused brown butter. He presents the dish – typically served at lunchtime – in a flat copper pot, family-style.

Other Teglio restaurants such as Ristorante Combolo and Ristorante Cerere, as well as many home chefs, in the area have also begun to make and serve gluten-free pizzoccheri. And, as a result of increased demand and a desire to grow more local and sustainable buckwheat, some Telglio-based buckwheat producers are trying to revive the industry.

A member of The Associazione per La Cultura del Grano Saraceno di Teglio e dei Cereali Alpini Tradizionali (Teglio Buckwheat and Traditional Alpine Grains Cultural Association) founded in 2008 to support local buckwheat cultivation, Maestroni is among 25 Teglio residents keeping the tradition alive with their own buckwheat fields. She measures her crop as her ancestors did, using an Ancient Roman unit, the pertica, or 688 sq m, and produces approximately 45kg of buckwheat flour for each harvest. "I and the other members of the association want to ensure that native buckwheat seeds aren't replaced by imported ones," she said.

The association also funded the restoration of an 18th-Century mill called Mulino Menaglio so that Maestroni and the other producers could grind their own buckwheat seeds into flour. The mill is part of a museum where members teach visitors about the history of grano saraceno in Teglio and give instructions for making pizzoccheri, forming the dough with just two ingredients: buckwheat flour and water.

Whether using just these two ingredients or adding a bit of wheat flour into the mix, it seems that the buckwheat and pizzoccheri tradition is living on in Teglio. And perhaps with time, as more buckwheat is cultivated, Lanzarotti's view of the Valtellina valley will become more reminiscent of the one she remembers from the past.

Pizzoccheri di Teglio (gluten-free) (serves 4)

From Ai Tigli

Ingredients:

500g buckwheat flour

200g butter

250g Valtellina Casera cheese (fontina or Gruyere can be used as a substitute)

150g Parmigiano Reggiano

200g Savoy cabbage, cut into strips

250g potatoes, peeled and diced into 2cm pieces

1 garlic clove, thinly sliced

Pepper to taste

Water

Instructions:

1. Mix the buckwheat flour with water gradually until you have a workable dough, and then knead the dough for about two minutes, adding buckwheat flour to your pastry board as needed.
2. Roll the dough on a marble or wooden pastry board until it's about 2-3mm thick, and cut it into two 7-8cm rectangular sheets.
3. Stack those sheets on top of each other and cut them into 5mm-wide strips. (Pizzoccheri can be delicate depending on the amount of starch in your buckwheat flour, and Scínetti recommends cooking the pasta immediately as the strips may break if left in the refrigerator for too long.)
4. Meanwhile, bring a large pot of salted water with the potatoes to a boil, and after about 5 minutes, add the cabbage. Continue to boil for an additional five minutes, or until the cabbage and potatoes are soft, then add the pasta, cooking for an additional 10 minutes.
5. Melt the butter in a shallow saucepan and then add the sliced garlic, simmering over medium heat until brown specks appear.
6. With a slotted spoon, remove half of the pasta and vegetable mixture from the pan, transfer it to a casserole dish, or shallow pot, and cover it with the grated cheese. Add the remaining vegetable and pasta mixture to the dish and cover it with cheese.
7. Scrape the saucepan to capture the brown milk solids at the bottom of the pan and pour the browned garlic-infused butter over the pasta dish. Serve with freshly ground pepper.