Baked Pizzoccheri alla Valtellinese

5 from 24 votes

Baked Pizzoccheri alla Valtellinese

Pizzoccheri alla Valtellinese is a warming and nutritious vegetarian buckwheat pasta dish from the Italian Alps. It's easy to make and perfect for the cold season.

Prep Time30

Cook Time25

Total Time55

Course: Main Course

Cuisine: Italian, Lombardy, Northern Italy

Keyword: authentic Italian pasta recipe, baked pasta recipe, buckwheat pasta, Italian food, Italian recipe, pizzoccheri, vegetarian

Servings:

Calories: 924kcal

Author: Jacqui

Ingredients

300 g pizzoccheri or buckwheat pasta (10-11oz) if you want to make your own pizzoccheri see my post about pizzoccheri
200 g savoy cabbage or Swiss chard (7oz) cut into small pieces with any tough stalks removed.
250 g potatoes (9oz) peeled and cut into smallish cubes
100 g unsalted butter (3.5OZ)
250 g Valtellina Casera DOP or Bitto, Gruyere or Fontina cheese (9oz) cut into cubes
150 g Parmesan or Grana Padano (5oz) grated or hard vegetarian cheese without rennet.
4-5 sage leaves torn in half
1 garlic clove peeled
Freshly ground pepper
salt for cooking and to taste

Instructions

Bring a large pot of salted water to the boil and start cooking the potatoes and the greens in it.
After 5 minutes, add the pasta and let it cook for a further 10 minutes ( the pasta needs to be very slightly less than al dente).
In the meantime, in a small frying pan, melt the butter with the clove of garlic and cook until both the butter and the garlic are golden
Add the sage leaves just before the garlic is ready.
Remove the garlic clove and set aside until the pasta is ready.
Drain the pizzoccheri and vegetables and place half or one third of the mixture into an oven dish (depending on the size and depth of your dish)
Scatter a handful of the chopped cheese over the top and sprinkle with some of the grated cheese,
Add more pizzoccheri and scatter again with the chopped and grated cheese
Repeat until you have used all the vegetables and pizzoccheri and the cheese is uniformly distributed through and on top of the dish.
Pour over the frothy, browned butter with sage.
Sprinkle with a bit more parmesan and grind some pepper on the top
Bake in a preheated oven (180° or 350F) until the cheese on the top starts to turn golden.(about 5-10 mins)
Serve immediately

Notes

If you don’t want to bake this dish you can cook the pasta a little more. Follow the other instructions except the casera/fontina cheese should be shavings not cubes and serve without baking.
If you want to add pancetta as I did for one dish. I fried 100g (3.5oz) of pancetta cubes in a little oil separately and added them to the pizzoccheri when I added the cheese to the dish.

Nutrition