Taste: My Life through Food(31)

Visiting Paolo’s casera (cheese cellar) is basically like entering a museum of aroma. The rich, deep, complex smells coming from a thousand wheels of cheese caused even my nostrils and my eyes to salivate. It was almost overwhelming. As I was about to rip open a wheel with my bare hands and gnaw my way through it, I noticed that Paolo had laid out three cheeses of various ages for me to taste, along with some local wines, hence saving me from an embarrassingly feral public episode. The differences between them were distinct, the oldest cheese being the most dry and most potent, the youngest slightly softer, and the cheese aged for a certain amount of time between the two tasted unsurprisingly like a bit of both. This is the same experience one might have when tasting Parmigiano in varying states of age. However, each morsel of the triad of Bitto had an extraordinary complexity and depth of flavor that I had never tasted in a cheese before. I cannot explain it other than to say it was exactly the sum of its parts and then some: mountains, rain, snow, cows, goats, grass, and time. Although I know that Parmigiano is known as the “King of Cheeses,” on a blustery day in a cellar in Gerola Alta in the Orobic Alps, according to this palate, that milky throne was usurped by tiny fragments of three ancient wheels of Bitto.

After visiting Paolo that day in his subterranean lactic lair, I went to a small stone cottage farther up in the mountains where I had promised to make pizzoccheri for the crew using a hunk of Bitto gifted by Paolo. As we made our way up to the cottage, I began to panic. What the fuck was I thinking? I had only made the dish a couple of times before and it had never quite turned out the way I had hoped. (I had eaten it for the first time at Riva, a London restaurant run by Andrea Riva, who hails from Lombardy, where it is made to perfection, hence my obsession.) As my panic was peaking we arrived at this gorgeous but tiny stone cottage that had been in the same family for generations. Once a barn for animals, it had been renovated into a charming weekend retreat. We were greeted by the owners, three generations of them: the grandfather, in his eighties, his daughter, and her teenage children. Suddenly I realized I was not only making pizzoccheri for the crew (who had no idea what it was supposed to taste like and were always starving, so I could easily get away with a mediocre version), but I was to prepare it for the family as well, all of whom were Lombards and knew this dish better than anyone in the world. Especially the octogenarian patriarch!

I took a deep breath, poured an enormous glass of cold white wine, and basically “acted.” Yes, dear reader, as you have seen me do for close to forty years now on stages and screens big and small, I simply pretended that I had been making pizzoccheri since birth. I moved with swift assurance as I talked through the steps while the cameras rolled, and within about forty minutes, from the initial pasta-making process to the final grate of Bitto, I served up the best pizzoccheri I have ever made and probably will ever make. Even the grandfather devoured his and told me it was perfect.

He was to die that night.

Kidding.

How did I do it?

Why did it work?

When fear grips the soul, it’s amazing what one can achieve. Especially when the cameras are rolling.

Now, I am sure that the indigenous ingredients, local buckwheat flour, sweet white Alpine butter, voluptuous Valtellina cheese, and of course the Bitto had a great deal to do with the successful outcome. I would also not be afraid to suggest that the comforting ambience of a stone cottage heated by an old wood stove as a mix of rain and snow blanketed the foothills of the Italian Alps perhaps played a significant role as well. As they say, location, location, Bitto, acting.

Here is how pizzoccheri is made and what you must do in order to truly understand why the dish was created ages ago.

First, make sure it’s cold out. Then, go for a hike up a mountain or partake in some winter activity such as skiing, skating, wood chopping, Alpine cow milking, hunting, ice fishing, axe throwing, or perhaps… cheese making.





Pizzoccheri


— SERVES 4 TO 6 —

1 medium Savoy cabbage

A big, sexy slab of Valtellina cheese, or something similar, like fontina

3 large yellow potatoes

A fuck of a lot of butter

4 large garlic cloves

1 pound pizzoccheri

Extra-virgin olive oil

2 handfuls grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, or Bitto (if available and you can afford it)

Salt



Remove and discard any tough outer leaves from the cabbage and roughly chop it into long pieces. Thinly cut about 15 pieces of Valtellina cheese and also grate about 3 cups. Set aside.

Preheat the oven to 325°F.

Peel and dice the potatoes and boil until cooked but still firm, about 15 minutes or so. Halfway through boiling, add the cabbage to the potatoes. When the potatoes and cabbage are cooked, drain them and set them aside.

In a large, deep frying pan over low heat, melt the fuckload of butter. Gently crush (if that’s even possible) the garlic cloves, place them in the pan, and cook until they soften and the butter has melted but not turned brown.

Boil the pizzoccheri until al dente and drain, reserving about 2 cups of the water. Return the pizzoccheri to the pot and drizzle them with a little olive oil or some butter so they don’t stick together. Pour a little of the garlic butter into a baking dish and begin to layer the ingredients, starting with the pizzoccheri, then the cabbage, then the potatoes, then both cheeses, drizzling more garlic butter over the whole mixture after each layer, adding a bit of the reserved pasta water to ensure it doesn’t get too thick but making sure it doesn’t get too watery. You may need only a cup. Top the final layer with a drizzle of olive oil and more grated cheese.