Polenta Taragna

Two things separate taragna from ordinary polenta. First, the flour: instead of pure cornmeal it uses a blend with buckwheat, which turns the finished dish grey-brown and gives it a toasted, nutty depth that corn alone never reaches. Second, the finish: butter and cut-up alpine cheese are worked in during the last few minutes, off the heat, until the whole pot goes glossy and pulls into strands.

The name comes from the tarèl, the long wooden stick used to stir a polenta in the copper cauldron. In the dialects of the Lombard Alps, tarare means to stir, and taragna is, literally, the polenta you stir. It needs forty to fifty minutes of near-continuous work.

It is not a side dish. In the Valtellina and the Bergamo valleys it is a one-pot meal, dense with fat, built for people who spent the day at two thousand metres.

Rich, savoury and unmistakably nutty. Buckwheat brings a toasted, almost bitter edge that reads as roasted hazelnut, and it stops the whole thing from being merely creamy and bland the way plain polenta can be.

The cheese and butter give it the texture of a loose, molten mash: spoonable, stringy, coating. Good taragna pulls a thread when you lift the spoon and settles into a slow slump on the plate rather than holding its shape.

If you know Swiss älplermagronen or a very rich aligot, the fat-plus-cheese register will be familiar. The buckwheat is what makes it Lombard. Alpine cheese (Bitto, Valtellina Casera, Branzi) brings a grassy, faintly sour depth that a generic melting cheese cannot fake.

Bring salted water to the boil (roughly four parts water to one part flour by weight) and rain the blended flours in while whisking. Once it thickens, switch to a wooden spoon or stick and stir for forty to fifty minutes over low heat, always in the same direction. It is done when it pulls away from the sides of the pot and a furrow closes slowly behind the spoon.

Then take it off the heat and add the fat: about 100 g of butter and 300 g of diced alpine cheese per kilo of flour. Beat it in for two or three minutes until the cheese strings and the surface goes glossy. Serve immediately, straight onto warm plates or a wooden board.

Eat it on its own, or with what the valleys eat it with: beef stewed in red wine, venison in salmì, grilled luganega sausage, sautéed porcini in autumn. A spoonful of soft gorgonzola melted into the middle needs nothing else, and a poached egg on top turns it into supper.

Leftovers set solid. Cut them into slabs and grill or fry them until crusted, with a slice of taleggio melted over the top.

The flour is the part that needs attention. Keep it in a closed jar somewhere cool and use it within about six months, because buckwheat carries more fat than maize and its oil turns first: the toasted note fades and a flat, cardboard edge takes its place. In a warm kitchen, or through a hot summer, the fridge is a sensible home for the bag, and the date printed on the packet is the reference for anything you buy sealed. Keep it away from the hob and close the bag properly, since flour picks up whatever the cupboard smells of.

Cooked taragna keeps two or three days in the fridge, covered. It sets completely solid in the cold, which is simply what cooked maize and buckwheat do, and it comes back in a pan with a splash of milk and a knob of butter, or gets cut into slabs and grilled. It freezes well already cooked and cut into slices, about two months, going straight from the freezer into the pan. Freezing it creamy achieves nothing, since it releases water as it thaws.

Colour is the first clue. Taragna is dark, grey brown, flecked with the paler specks of the maize; a yellow taragna is yellow polenta with cheese stirred through it, which happens far more often than anyone admits, in Milan as much as in New York. The texture should be loose and stringy rather than firm: real taragna is eaten with a spoon and pulls threads of cheese when you lift it. If it stands up in slices, it was made too thick or it has gone cold.

On the tongue the buckwheat is audible, a toasted, almost hazelnut note that maize alone never gives. The cheese should be there without smothering everything; if all you taste is melted cheese, industrial fontina went in instead of an alpine one. On bagged mixes sold abroad, read past the words polenta taragna flour and find the buckwheat percentage: below twenty per cent it is yellow polenta in disguise. Note also that buckwheat here means the flour, not the roasted groats sold as kasha, and that American grits are a different grain preparation altogether.

The flour is the thing to buy, and both halves are easy. Coarse stone-ground cornmeal (labelled polenta, bramata or 'coarse yellow') runs about 4 to 8 dollars per pound in the US and £3 to £6 per kilo in the UK. Buckwheat flour is stocked in every health food shop and most supermarkets, at similar prices. Blend two to one.

Pre-mixed farina per polenta taragna is imported by Italian specialists online, at roughly €7 to €12 per kilo plus shipping. Check the buckwheat percentage on the label: below 20% you are paying a premium for slightly beige polenta.

For the cheese, look for fontina in any decent supermarket. Valtellina Casera DOP and Bitto DOP reach the US and UK through Italian importers and cheese specialists: Casera runs 18 to 28 dollars per pound, Bitto considerably more and worth it once. Buy buckwheat flour in small quantities and store it cool: it is oily and goes rancid within months.

The Valtellina, in the province of Sondrio, is the obvious base. The crotti and mountain rifugi above Sondrio, Teglio and Chiuro still cook it in copper cauldrons over wood, and Teglio (which also claims the pizzoccheri) puts both on the same menu.

In the province of Bergamo, head up the Val Brembana towards Branzi and Foppolo, or into the Val di Scalve. The dairies here make the cheeses the dish depends on, and the winter refuges serve taragna at midday to skiers who have earned it.

The Val Camonica runs autumn festivals pairing it with wild mushrooms. And in Milan, where generations of mountain families settled, the older osterie keep it as a fixed winter dish: less authentic than the valley version, but honestly made and a good introduction.