Move Over, Mac and Cheese: It’s Gnocchi Alla Bava’s Time to Shine

Within the Italian Northwestern Alpine area of Valle D’Aosta, there aren’t any olive orchards, no comfortable rolling hills lined with spindly cypress, no heat Mediterranean waters. As a substitute, street indicators are written in Italian and French, vineyards are precariously etched into rocky cliffsides, and dramatic ridges rise steeply from inexperienced valleys under as much as blue-grey snowy peaks, all of it presided over by Monte Bianco—Mont Blanc, for those who’re on the Swiss or French sides of the border—the tallest mountain in Western Europe.

Climb the area’s winding roads increased and better and your ears will finally decide up a wierd and marvelous music coming from close by pastures—tons of of bells tolling collectively to make a sound that is each discordant and arrhythmic but someway additionally soothing. The unwitting musicians are the native cows, every with an oversize bell slung round its neck from a heavy leather-based strap, the dings and dongs sounding with every step and chunk of grass.

These cows are chargeable for Fontina cheese, arguably the best cheese to return out of Valle D’Aosta. A member of the Alpine cheese household, which incorporates classics like Gruyère, Comté, and Emmentaler, Fontina is earthy, nutty, and buttery, with nice mushroom notes. It is also an excellent melting cheese.

That is the key to the area’s “bava” sauce, so named for the drool that it both elicits from diners or resembles in its melted state (or each, perhaps). Fontina melts so fantastically that there isn’t any want for any additional methods to assist it kind a easy and secure emulsion—no butter-and-flour roux used to construct cheese sauces like Mornay, no tartaric acids (whether or not from wine or cream of tartar) required for a profitable fondue.

Merely whisk cubed Fontina over reasonable warmth into heavy cream with some butter, black pepper, and nutmeg, and the sauce will kind. Folded with tender potato gnocchi, the result’s true mountain meals, wealthy and hearty, assured to heat bellies and supply additional energy to fight that chilly mountain air.

At the very least, the cheese will soften for those who use actual Fontina, the DOP model from Valle D’Aosta. That is a type of cheeses with a severe imposter drawback, affected by authorized fakes popping out of in every single place from Denmark to Argentina and america. May these work too? Maybe, however I did not trouble testing them. I’ve made the error of consuming these facsimiles earlier than and, if you already know the flavour of actual Fontina, they simply will not do. Verified Fontina tastes finest, and it really works, so so far as I am involved there isn’t any must dig into it past that.

This will likely sound like snobbish dismissal of extra inexpensive choices, however I am standing by it. Not like a multi-cheese sauce like quattro formaggi, alla bava stars Fontina, and solely Fontina. Its taste is the sauce. Served on tender and mildly candy potato gnocchi, there’s little for a subpar sauce to cover behind.

Talking of these gnocchi, whereas some recipes for gnocchi alla bava name for utilizing little buckwheat-flour dumplings, many others name for potato dumplings, and if you are going to make the most effective model of potato gnocchi alla bava, the gnocchi have to be selfmade. Retailer-bought gnocchi (with only a few exceptions) are heavy, dense, and lack what ought to be their signature potato taste. The sauce itself comes collectively so simply that making the gnocchi actually is the one actual work, and it is work that is worthwhile. With just a bit apply, it is hardly a lot of a mission: Bake the potatoes, scoop out the flesh and rice it, knead gently with flour and egg, kind, and prepare dinner.