Valtellina, · Lombardia Techniques

The lean, wine-cured beef salume of the Valtellina alpine valley — Italy's most refined cured beef and the only IGP-protected cured beef in Italy. Whole topside of beef (fesa or magatello) cured in a dry mix of coarse salt, black pepper, juniper, cinnamon, cloves, and red wine for 10-15 days, then cold-air-dried in mountain air for 4-8 weeks. Sliced paper-thin, pink-burgundy, with a silky texture and zero fat.

The buckwheat pancake of the Valtellina valley — thick, rustic discs of grano saraceno (buckwheat) and wheat flour mixed with milk, egg, and butter, cooked on a flat iron griddle and served immediately with Bitto or Casera cheese melted over the top, or wrapped around Bresaola. The buckwheat gives a characteristically dark, earthy, faintly bitter flavour that stands as the savory counterpart to the valley's Pizzoccheri pasta. Made at home for breakfast or merenda (afternoon snack).

Pizzoccheri are the buckwheat pasta of the Valtellina — thick, short, flat noodles made from a mixture of buckwheat flour (grano saraceno) and a small amount of white flour, cooked with vegetables (traditionally Savoy cabbage and potato), drained and layered with Bitto DOP (or Valtellina Casera DOP) and butter browned with garlic until the cheese melts through. The buckwheat gives the pasta a dark grey-brown colour and a distinctive nutty, slightly bitter flavour that standard pasta does not have. It is one of the few Italian pasta preparations where the vegetables and cheese are cooked with the pasta rather than applied as a sauce — an Alpine all-in-one preparation.