Italian Carnia Stuffed Pasta | Cjarsons Carnici
Cjarsons are the filled pasta of Carnia, the mountain valleys in the north of Friuli Venezia Giulia, and the one Italian primo that puts raisins, cinnamon and a pinch of sugar in the same parcel as potato, ricotta and herbs. The first bite reads as savoury, the second brings a sweetness that arrives from behind, and the smoked ricotta grated over the top pulls the whole thing back towards salt.
There is no single authorised filling. Every valley of the Carnia has its own, and the ingredients read like an inventory of a mountain pantry at the end of winter: boiled potato, fresh and smoked ricotta, wild mint, raisins, candied citron, crushed amaretti, cocoa, cinnamon, lemon zest. What is constant is the structure: a very thin wrapper, a soft filling, browned butter and grated ricotta affumicata.
The version below keeps the potato and ricotta base most valleys agree on, uses raisins and a little sugar rather than candied fruit, and holds the cinnamon and cocoa down to accents you notice only after the herbs. Made this way the plate stays firmly a first course, never a dessert, which is exactly where the Friulians put it.
Yield: 6 servings as a primo, about 48 pieces. Prep: 1 hour. Rest: 30 minutes. Cook: 40 minutes. Total: about 2 hours 10 minutes. Difficulty: intermediate. Course: primo piatto. Region: Carnia, Friuli Venezia Giulia.
The Story
Carnia is the alpine quarter of Friuli Venezia Giulia, a set of steep valleys running up to the Austrian border around Tolmezzo, Paularo and Ovaro. It is poor farming country: short summers, thin soil, more pasture than field. What it had instead was movement. From the sixteenth century onward the cramars, travelling pedlars from these valleys, walked north over the passes into Carinthia and Bavaria selling herbs and small goods from a wooden case on the back, and came home with cinnamon, cloves, sugar, raisins and cocoa.
That is the direct explanation for a dish no one would otherwise predict. The spices were used, as in much of central Europe, in savoury cooking rather than only in cakes. Combined with the two things Carnia always had, potatoes and ricotta from the malghe up on the summer pastures, they produced a filled pasta sitting somewhere between an Italian raviolo and a Carinthian Kasnudeln, which is precisely what the geography would suggest.
The name comes from the Friulian language and is spelled several ways, cjarsons, cjalsons, cialsons, with the pronunciation shifting from valley to valley. They are the dish of feast days and of the period around Easter and Ferragosto, made in quantity by the women of the household, and the recipe was carried in memory rather than written down. The herb mixtures in the best fillings, wild mint, lemon balm and marjoram, are still gathered rather than bought.
Ingredients
For the dough
All purpose flour, 2 1/2 cups (315 g)
Large eggs, 2
Warm water, 1/3 cup (80 ml), approximately
Extra virgin olive oil, 1 tsp (5 ml)
Fine sea salt, 1/2 tsp (3 g)
For the filling
Yellow fleshed potatoes, 1 lb (450 g), peeled and cut into chunks
Whole milk ricotta, well drained, 8 oz (225 g)
Golden raisins, 1/3 cup (50 g), soaked and drained
Fresh mint, finely chopped, 1 tbsp (3 g)
Flat leaf parsley, finely chopped, 1 tbsp (3 g)
Fresh marjoram, finely chopped, 1 tsp (1 g)
Finely grated lemon zest, from 1 lemon
Ground cinnamon, 1/4 tsp (0.6 g)
Unsweetened cocoa powder, 1 tsp (2 g)
Granulated sugar, 2 tsp (8 g)
Fine sea salt, 1/2 tsp (3 g)
Freshly ground black pepper, 1/4 tsp
For finishing
Unsalted butter, 8 tbsp (113 g)
Ricotta affumicata, smoked ricotta, finely grated, 3 oz (85 g)
Ground cinnamon, a very small pinch per plate
Coarse salt for the pasta water, 1 tbsp (18 g) per 4 quarts (3.8 liters)
Preparation
Step 1
Make the dough. Mound the flour on a board, add the salt and work in the eggs, the olive oil and enough warm water to bring it together. This is not a rich egg pasta: the water keeps it supple enough to roll very thin and fold without cracking. Knead 8 to 10 minutes until smooth and elastic, wrap it and rest it 30 minutes at room temperature.
Step 2
Cook and dry the potatoes. Boil the potato chunks in lightly salted water until a knife passes through without resistance. Drain them and put them straight back into the hot dry pot for a minute over low heat, shaking, until the surfaces go floury. That minute is what keeps the filling from being wet. Rice them while hot, spread them out and let them cool.
Step 3
Prepare the raisins and the herbs. Soak the raisins in warm water for 15 minutes only, then drain and pat them dry between two sheets of paper; over soaked raisins carry water into the filling and burst in the pot. Chop the mint, parsley and marjoram at the last moment, since their freshness is what keeps the filling from reading as dessert.
Step 4
Mix and rest the filling. Combine the cooled riced potato with the drained ricotta, the raisins, the herbs, the lemon zest, cinnamon, cocoa, sugar, salt and pepper. Work it just until homogeneous, since overworked potato turns gluey. Taste it: dairy and potato first, then herbs, then a low sweetness, with the spice last. Chill it for 20 minutes before shaping.
Step 5
Roll the sheets very thin. Divide the dough into four pieces and take each down to the second last setting of the machine, about 1/32 inch (0.8 mm), thin enough to see the shadow of your hand through it. A thick edge stays chewy long after the filling is hot. Work one sheet at a time and keep the others under a cloth.
Step 6
Cut and fill. Cut rounds about 3 inches (7.5 cm) across and place 1 1/2 teaspoons of filling slightly off centre on each. Do not overfill: an overfilled cjarson traps air, and trapped air expands in the water and forces the seal open. Moisten the rim with a wet fingertip only if the pasta has dried, since flour on the edge stops it sticking.
Step 7
Seal and pleat. Fold each round into a half moon and press from the filling outward, driving the air ahead of you, then press the rim firmly. For the local shape, pinch the curved edge into small overlapping pleats, as they do around Ovaro. Lay them in a single layer on a floured tray, never stacked, and cook them within the hour.
Step 8
Boil them gently. Bring a wide pot of salted water to a gentle rolling boil, not a violent one, and cook the cjarsons a dozen at a time. They are ready when the pasta is tender and they have risen and stayed near the surface, usually 3 to 5 minutes. Lift them out with a slotted spoon, keeping a cup of the cooking water.
Step 9
Brown the butter and dress. Melt the butter in a wide pan over medium heat until the milk solids settle and turn hazelnut brown and the smell goes from dairy to toasted nut, then take it off the heat at once. Slide the drained cjarsons in with a spoon of pasta water and swirl the pan, never stirring, until a light glossy coating forms. Serve immediately.
Plating
Use warm shallow plates rather than deep bowls, which trap steam under the pasta, soften the wrapper and turn the grated ricotta into a paste within a minute. Warm them to about 120 degrees Fahrenheit (50 degrees Celsius), just enough to keep the butter fluid, and lay out 6 to 8 cjarsons per person in a single relaxed layer so every piece keeps its own surface for the cheese.
Spoon a little of the browned butter over them, including some of the toasted solids, which carry most of the flavour. If butter pools at the edge of the plate you have used too much. Grate the ricotta affumicata from a height of eight or nine inches so it falls as a light veil rather than a heap, then add the smallest pinch of cinnamon. Nothing else belongs here: no parsley for colour, no pepper, no oil.
Professional Technique
The controlling technique in cjarsons is the management of a sweet note inside a savoury course, done by ordering the palate rather than by reducing the sugar. Dairy fat and starch arrive first because they coat the tongue; herbs and lemon zest follow because their aromatics read high; the raisins and sugar sit underneath both, and the cinnamon and cocoa are set so low they register as warmth rather than flavour. Raise the spice and the dish tips into dessert immediately, which is why a Carnia cook tastes the filling raw before a single piece is shaped.
The second technique is the water balance of the filling, which decides whether the pasta survives the pot. Potato, ricotta and raisins all hold free water, and free water inside a sealed parcel turns to steam and blows the seal. Drying the potatoes in the hot pot, draining the ricotta overnight and patting the raisins dry are three operations doing one job. Chilling the filling firms the fat in the ricotta and makes it far easier to seal cleanly.
The third is the browned butter, the only sauce, made in about ninety seconds. As the water boils off, the milk proteins and lactose left behind brown and produce the nutty aroma. The window between hazelnut and burnt is perhaps twenty seconds over medium heat and there is no recovery from the far side of it. Pull the pan early and add a spoon of starchy pasta water so the fat emulsifies into a coating instead of running off.
Texture and Moisture Control
Three textures have to be right at once: a wrapper thin enough to yield immediately, a filling creamy without being wet, and a butter coating glossy rather than greasy. The wrapper is the one most often got wrong. At the second last setting it cooks in three minutes and disappears against the filling; one or two settings thicker it needs five or six, and by then the filling is too hot and pushing at the seal. Roll a test sheet and cook two pieces before committing the whole batch.
Moisture moves in one direction here, out of the filling and into the pasta, from the moment the cjarsons are shaped. Pieces held on a tray for more than an hour develop translucent damp patches where the filling touches the dough, and those patches are where they split. Either cook them within the hour or freeze them in a single layer until firm, which stops the migration completely.
On the finishing side, the emulsion keeps the plate from being oily. Butter alone slides off filled pasta and collects on the plate. A tablespoon or two of starchy cooking water swirled into the browned butter off the heat gives a light sauce that clings, and it lets the grated smoked ricotta stick to the surface rather than falling to the bottom. Swirl the pan rather than stirring, because a spoon tears the seams.
Professional Mise en Place
Cjarsons are slow to make and fast to serve. Everything except the boiling and the butter is done in advance, and the last four minutes need nothing but attention.
Equipment and tools
Potato ricer and a fine sieve for draining the ricotta
Pasta machine, or a long rolling pin and a large board
Round cutter, 3 inches (7.5 cm), and trays lined with floured cloth
Wide pot for boiling and a wide low sided pan for the butter
Slotted spoon and a fine grater for the ricotta affumicata
Prepared ahead
Ricotta drained in a sieve over a bowl, overnight in the refrigerator
Filling made and chilled, up to 1 day ahead, kept covered
Cjarsons shaped and frozen on trays, up to 1 month, cooked from frozen
Butter weighed and cut, smoked ricotta grated within the hour of service
Service setup
Water at a gentle rolling boil, salted, with a cup ready to lift cooking water
Plates warming, never hot, and the butter pan on a low burner
Cjarsons cooked in batches of a dozen and dressed batch by batch
Nothing held: the pasta goes from pan to plate to table without pause
Chef Tips
Taste the raw filling twice, once when you mix it and once after it has chilled. Cold mutes sweetness and salt, so a filling that tasted balanced while warm can read flat out of the refrigerator. Adjust the salt and the lemon zest at that second tasting rather than the sugar, which is impossible to take back.
If you cannot find ricotta affumicata, do not fall back on Parmigiano, which is too sharp for this filling. A young mountain cheese grated fine, a fresh Montasio or an alpine toma, is much closer in spirit. Failing that, use a little more browned butter and slightly more salt in the filling.
Make double and freeze half, because the labour is nearly all in the shaping and frozen cjarsons cook better than refrigerated ones. Freeze them in a single layer on a floured tray until hard, then bag them, and cook them straight from the freezer with about a minute more. Never thaw them first.
If the pleated edge defeats you, do not force it. A plain half moon sealed with the tines of a fork is traditional in several Carnia valleys and holds better under a thin wrapper than a badly executed pleat, which leaves the edge doubled and chewy on one side.
Common Mistakes
Using wet ricotta or wet potato. Undrained ricotta and potatoes that were not dried in the pot put free water inside a sealed parcel, and that water turns to steam and opens the seam. Drain the ricotta overnight and dry the potatoes over the heat for a full minute.
Letting the spice lead. If cinnamon or cocoa is the first thing you smell, the filling is wrong however pleasant it tastes on a spoon. Both are accents here, and the herbs should reach the nose first.
Rolling the pasta too thick. A wrapper at the middle settings needs five or six minutes in the water, by which time the filling is overheated and pushing outward. Go to the second last setting and cook them in three to five minutes.
Overfilling the rounds. More filling traps more air and the edges cannot meet cleanly. One and a half teaspoons on a three inch round is right, and you press from the filling outward so the air is driven ahead of your fingers.
Flouring the sealing edge. Flour is a release agent and it is doing its job when the two edges refuse to bond. Keep the rims clean and moisten them only if the sheet has started to dry.
Boiling them hard. A violent boil knocks the parcels into each other and against the pot, and thin filled pasta splits on impact. Hold a gentle rolling boil and cook a dozen at a time in a wide pot.
Burning the butter. Past hazelnut brown the milk solids go black and bitter within seconds and the whole plate tastes scorched. Take the pan off the heat while they are still amber, since they keep cooking in the residual heat.
Wine Pairing
Collio Friulano DOC: The local answer and the most complete one. Friulano finishes on a distinct bitter almond note that runs straight alongside the browned butter, and its texture is broad enough to carry the potato and ricotta without being flattened. There is enough acidity to reset the palate between pieces, which a dish this rich in dairy fat genuinely needs.
Ribolla Gialla Collio DOC: The sharper Friulian white, and the one to choose when the filling leans sweet. Its high acidity and green apple attack cut through the raisins and sugar instead of agreeing with them, keeping the plate on the savoury side, while the faintly herbal edge of the grape picks up the mint and marjoram.
Trento DOC: Traditional method sparkling wine from the mountains just west of here and an excellent foil for browned butter. The bead lifts the fat off the palate between mouthfuls, while the bread and hazelnut character of long lees ageing runs directly with the toasted milk solids in the pan.
Refosco dal Peduncolo Rosso Friuli DOC: For anyone who wants a red with a filled pasta, this is the Friulian one. Dark plum and violet fruit, firm acidity and a bitter twist on the finish give it the grip to handle the smoked ricotta, the most assertive thing on the plate. Serve it at around 59 degrees Fahrenheit (15 degrees Celsius).
Schioppettino Friuli Colli Orientali DOC: The most interesting match of the five and the closest to the spices in the filling. Schioppettino carries a genuine black pepper aroma over sour cherry fruit and light tannin, and that peppery lift meets the cinnamon and cocoa on their own terms rather than covering them.
Storage & Reheating
The filling keeps in an airtight container in the refrigerator for 2 days and is arguably better on the second, once the herbs and lemon zest have spread through the potato. Shaped uncooked cjarsons are the exception to every rule about fresh pasta: do not refrigerate them for more than an hour, because moisture migrates into the dough and the pieces split in the pot.
Freeze them instead. Lay the shaped pieces in a single layer on a floured tray, freeze until hard, about 2 hours, then bag them and keep them up to 1 month. Cook them directly from frozen in gently boiling salted water with about 1 extra minute. They should never be thawed at any stage.
Cooked and dressed cjarsons do not store well. Refrigerate them covered for up to 2 days, then warm them in a pan with a knob of butter and a spoon of water over low heat, or lay them in a buttered dish, dot with butter and smoked ricotta and give them 8 minutes at 375 degrees Fahrenheit (190 degrees Celsius) until the edges crisp. Avoid the microwave, which makes the wrapper rubbery.
Nutrition
Per serving, based on 6 servings of about 8 pieces each:
Calories: 540 kcal
Total Fat: 24 g
Saturated Fat: 14 g
Trans Fat: 0.7 g
Unsaturated Fat: 8 g
Cholesterol: 110 mg
Sodium: 560 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 63 g
Fiber: 3 g
Total Sugars: 9 g
Added Sugars: 1.5 g
Protein: 18 g
Lactose: 2 g
Principal micronutrients: calcium, phosphorus, potassium, vitamin A, vitamin B12, selenium, iron
These figures are estimates. The largest variables are how much browned butter actually leaves the pan and how heavily the smoked ricotta is grated, both of which move the fat and the sodium considerably.
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