Pizzoccheri Della Valtellina

So what's a dish with an Italian name doing on my blog from France? It's just another example of the international cuisine that we enjoy experimenting with. And experiment we did. We warned our house guest, Chris, what she was in for.

Our version of Pizzoccheri della Valtellina.
Maybe we should come up with a French name for it?

My friend Andy, who lives with his wife Christa in Vienna, Austria, blogged about this hearty mountain dish that is popular in Switzerland, and he published his recipe. The dish originated in northern Italy, where buckwheat flour was introduced during the crusades in the middle ages.

Andy hints that, like many regional specialties, this dish is not so much a recipe, but a concept, and that variations abound. Since buckwheat noodles are not easy to find in our corner of rural France, I made my own. And while I've made my own pasta before, I've never ventured into flavored pasta, let alone buckwheat noodles.

I found a recipe for buckwheat noodles on the internet and set to. Buckwheat, or sarrasin, flour is common in France because it's used to make Breton crêpes, and we had some on hand. The noodles are made with two parts sarrasin, one part standard flour (to provide the gluten that buckwheat lacks), eggs and milk. A few turns of the pasta machine and voilà!

We used frozen spinach, again because it's what we had in the house, agata potatoes, smoked lardons, and comté cheese (from the mountains on the Franco-Swiss border). We also mixed the final dish into a lasagna pan and sprinkled cheese on the top and popped it into the oven for a bit to warm through and melt the cheese.

Boy, was it delicious - each of the three of us had seconds, and Ken had thirds. Thanks, Andy!