Italian Fennel Gratin with Toma and Turin Breadsticks | Finocchi Gratinati con Fonduta di Toma e Grissini Torinesi
This is fennel taken seriously. Wedges of bulb are blanched until just yielding, laid in a buttered dish, flooded with a béchamel enriched with Toma Piemontese and Parmigiano until it behaves like a fonduta, then buried under coarsely crushed Grissini Torinesi bound with butter, oil and more Parmigiano. It goes into a hot oven and comes out with a crust that shatters under the spoon over a vegetable gone completely soft and sweet.
The dish is a Piedmontese assembly rather than a single traditional recipe: it borrows the mountain cheese of the Alpine valleys, the breadsticks of Turin, and the northern habit of finishing a boiled vegetable under béchamel and a fierce top heat. What makes it work is the contrast of three textures most gratins collapse into one: melting fennel, a sauce that stays pourable, and a topping that never goes soggy because it is made of twice baked bread rather than fresh crumbs.
Yield: 4 servings. Prep: 25 minutes. Blanch: 8 minutes. Bake: 20 minutes. Rest: 5 minutes. Total: about 1 hour. Difficulty: intermediate. Course: contorno. Region: Piedmont.
The Story
Toma Piemontese is one of the oldest cheeses of the western Alps, made in the valleys of Piedmont since at least the eleventh century and granted DOP status in 1996. The name comes from the dialect word for a cheese made in an alpine hut, and there is no single Toma: every valley from the Val di Susa to the Valsesia made its own, aged from weeks to months. The young soft version melts best, and it is what Piedmontese cooks reach for when they want a fonduta without the funk of Fontina.
The grissino is Turin's own invention, with a documented birth. In 1679 the court baker Antonio Brunero, instructed by the physician Teobaldo Pecchio, made a thin thoroughly dried bread for the sickly young Duke Vittorio Amedeo II of Savoy, who could not digest the soft crumb of ordinary loaves. The ghersino, from ghersa, the local word for a long loaf, became the bread of the Savoy court and then of the city. Napoleon had them shipped from Turin to Paris.
Fennel is not native to the Piedmontese repertoire the way it is to the south, but it arrived on northern tables in the nineteenth century and slotted into the finocchi gratinati formula Italy applies to almost any boiled vegetable: blanch, sauce, top, brown. Bringing mountain cheese, court breadstick and southern bulb together is what Piedmontese home cooks have always done with what the pantry held, and the anise sweetness of fennel against the nutty lactic warmth of Toma is far better than its improvised origins suggest.
Ingredients
For the fennel
Fennel bulbs, large, 4, about 2 lb (900 g) trimmed
Unsalted butter, 2 tbsp (28 g), plus more for the dish
Extra virgin olive oil, 1 tbsp (15 ml)
Fine sea salt, 1 tsp (6 g), plus more for the blanching water
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
For the Toma béchamel
Unsalted butter, 3 tbsp (42 g)
All purpose flour, 3 tbsp (24 g)
Whole milk, 2 cups (480 ml)
Toma Piemontese, finely grated, 5 oz (140 g)
Parmigiano Reggiano, finely grated, 1/2 cup (45 g)
Freshly grated nutmeg, 1/4 tsp (0.5 g)
Black or white pepper, to taste
Fine sea salt, as needed
For the grissini crust
Grissini Torinesi, 4 oz (115 g)
Parmigiano Reggiano, finely grated, 1/3 cup (30 g)
Melted butter, 2 tbsp (28 g)
Extra virgin olive oil, 1 tbsp (15 ml)
Flat leaf parsley, chopped, 1 tbsp (4 g)
Preparation
Trimming and cutting the fennel
Cut off the stalks and fronds, reserving a few fronds for the finish. Trim a thin slice from the base of each bulb but leave the core intact, then peel away any bruised or stringy outer layer. Stand each bulb upright and cut it lengthways through the core into 6 wedges, so the core holds each wedge together through blanching and baking. Aim for wedges about 3/4 inch (2 cm) thick; cut smaller bulbs into quarters.
Blanching and drying the wedges
Bring a large pot of water to a boil and salt it well. Slide in the wedges and blanch 6 to 8 minutes, until a knife point enters the thickest part with slight resistance. They should be just tender, not soft; the oven will finish them. Lift them out with a spider onto a clean kitchen towel and let them steam dry 10 minutes, turning once. Fennel is roughly 90 percent water, and wet wedges release it under the béchamel and split the sauce into a thin grey pool.
Colouring the fennel in butter and oil
Heat the butter with the olive oil in a wide skillet over medium high heat until the foam subsides. Lay the wedges cut side down in a single layer and let them take colour for 3 to 4 minutes without moving them, then turn and colour the second cut face. Season with the salt and a grind of pepper. You want golden caramelised faces, not browning all over: those two flat surfaces carry most of the sweetness. Work in two batches rather than crowding the pan, which steams the fennel instead of searing it.
Building the béchamel
Melt the butter in a heavy saucepan over medium low heat, whisk in the flour and cook the roux a full minute, whisking constantly, until it smells faintly of biscuit but has taken no colour. Warm the milk separately, then add it in three additions, whisking each smooth before the next. Bring to a bare simmer and cook 6 to 8 minutes, stirring into the corners, until the sauce coats a spoon and a finger drawn across leaves a clean line. Season with nutmeg, pepper and salt.
Melting in the Toma
Take the pan off the heat, let the sauce cool a minute, then add the grated Toma in three handfuls, stirring each until it has disappeared before the next goes in. Add the Parmigiano last. Residual heat is enough to melt both cheeses; over direct heat the casein proteins tighten, squeeze out their fat and the fonduta turns grainy. Correct the salt now, remembering the crust will add more.
Crushing the grissini for the crust
Put the grissini in a bag or between two sheets of parchment and crush them with a rolling pin into irregular pieces about the size of a lentil, with a few larger shards left in. Do not use a food processor, which reduces them to dust that packs down and bakes into a dense sheet. Toss them with the Parmigiano, melted butter, oil and parsley until every piece is lightly coated and the mixture looks like coarse damp gravel.
Assembling and baking the gratin
Heat the oven to 400°F (200°C). Butter a gratin dish of about 9 by 13 inches (23 by 33 cm) and arrange the wedges in a single overlapping layer, best coloured faces upward. Pour the warm fonduta over them, easing it between the wedges so no pocket is dry but leaving the tips just proud of the sauce. Scatter the grissini over the top without pressing it down. Bake about 20 minutes, until the sauce bubbles at the edges and the crust is deeply golden. If the top is pale, give it 60 to 90 seconds under the broiler. Rest 5 minutes.
Plating
This gratin is best served in the dish it was baked in at a family table, because the crust is at its most impressive intact. For plated service, cut down through the crust with a thin sharp knife rather than a spoon, then lift a section out with an offset spatula so the three layers stay stacked: fennel at the bottom, fonduta in the middle, shattered grissini on top.
Set it slightly off centre on a warm plate, spoon a little of the pooled sauce alongside rather than over the crust, and finish with the reserved fronds and a turn of black pepper. Serve hot, around 150°F (65°C) at the centre, and warm the plates: a cold plate stiffens the béchamel within a minute and the fonduta stops flowing.
Professional Technique
The technique that defines this dish is using a béchamel as a stabiliser for a cheese sauce rather than melting cheese on its own. A true Piedmontese fonduta is cheese, milk and egg yolk, and it breaks past roughly 150°F (65°C). Here the starch from the roux gets in the way: gelatinised starch granules separate the casein proteins and hold the fat in suspension, so the sauce survives twenty minutes in a 400°F (200°C) oven without splitting. That is why the flour is cooked a full minute first, since raw flour tastes of paste and still carries the amylase that would thin the sauce as it stands.
The second technique is the choice of grissini over breadcrumbs. Grissini are baked twice, to a moisture content of around 4 percent, and have almost no crumb structure to reabsorb liquid. Breadcrumbs sit on a wet sauce and wick it upward by capillary action, which is why most vegetable gratins have a damp pasty top layer within ten minutes of leaving the oven. The crushed grissini, coated in fat that waterproofs each piece, stay audibly crisp through service, and that fat film turns radiant heat into browning rather than letting the exposed edges scorch.
Texture and Moisture Control
Fennel carries an enormous amount of water and releases it in two waves: during blanching and again in the oven as the cell walls break down. Blanching and drying deals with the first wave; searing in butter deals with the second by driving moisture off the cut faces and setting a lightly caramelised barrier. Skip the searing and the wedges weep into the fonduta and thin it to a broth. Skip the drying and the sear never happens, because a wet surface has to reach 212°F (100°C) and evaporate before it can brown.
The béchamel should be slightly thicker than you want on the plate, coating the spoon firmly rather than running off it, because the fennel lets go of liquid and thins it during baking. If it looks too tight once the cheese has gone in, loosen it with warm milk, not cream, so the fat balance stays where it belongs.
On the crust side the enemy is compression: never press the grissini into the sauce. Left loose, the topping keeps air pockets that let steam escape upward, and steam that escapes has not softened the crust. Resting 5 minutes lets the starch set and reabsorb the free liquid that separated at high heat, which is the difference between a portion that holds its shape and one that slumps.
Professional Mise en Place
Almost everything here can be staged in advance, and only the cheese, the crust and the bake belong to the last hour.
Equipment and tools
Large pot for blanching, a spider and a clean kitchen towel
Wide skillet for searing the wedges in two batches
Heavy saucepan and a balloon whisk for the béchamel
Rolling pin and a sturdy bag for the grissini, no food processor
Gratin dish about 9 by 13 inches (23 by 33 cm), buttered
Prepared ahead
Fennel trimmed, blanched, dried and seared up to a day ahead, refrigerated on paper towel
Both cheeses grated and held cold, sealed
Grissini crushed and held dry, without the fat and cheese, which would soften them overnight
Béchamel made to the seasoning stage up to two hours ahead, held warm in a bain marie under parchment
Gratin dish buttered and the oven at temperature
Service setup
Fennel brought to room temperature before it goes into the dish
Cheeses stirred into the warm béchamel off the heat, never during the hold
Grissini dressed with fat, cheese and parsley only at assembly
Plates warming while the gratin bakes, fronds picked and ready
Oven to table with only the 5 minute rest in between
Chef Tips
Choose fennel bulbs that are squat and rounded rather than flat and elongated. The round ones are sweeter and more tender; the flat ones are stringier and better suited to slow braising.
Grate the Toma on the fine side of the box grater. Fine shreds dissolve into the béchamel in seconds and spend far less time exposed to heat, which is the whole point of adding them off the flame.
Buy grissini stirati, the hand pulled irregular ones, rather than uniform extruded sticks. The uneven thickness gives both fine crumbs and larger shards from the same crushing, and that range of sizes is what makes the crust interesting to eat.
Warm the milk before it goes into the roux. Cold milk hitting hot roux is the commonest cause of lumps. To push the dish further, slice the trimmed stalks thin into the blanching water and use a ladle of it in place of some milk for a deeper anise note.
Common Mistakes
Cutting the core out of the bulb. The wedges fall apart into loose layers during blanching. Leave the core in and cut lengthways through it.
Blanching the fennel until fully soft. It disintegrates in the oven and there is nothing to bite through. Pull it at 6 to 8 minutes, when a knife tip meets slight resistance.
Putting wet fennel straight into the dish. The released water thins the fonduta into a puddle. Drain and steam dry on a towel for 10 minutes, then sear.
Adding the Toma over direct heat. The cheese seizes and the sauce turns grainy with oil beading on the surface. Take the pan off the heat and add the cheese in three handfuls.
Pouring cold milk onto hot roux in one go. The flour clumps before it can hydrate. Warm the milk and add it in three stages, whisking smooth each time.
Processing the grissini to a fine powder. It packs into a dense sandy layer instead of a crust with shards. Crush them by hand and keep the pieces irregular.
Pressing the topping down onto the sauce. Compressed crumbs wick up moisture and go soggy. Scatter the crust loosely and leave it alone.
Serving straight from the oven with no rest. The sauce is still liquid and runs away from the fennel. Give it 5 minutes to set.
Wine Pairing
Roero Arneis DOCG: The obvious local white and the best single match. Arneis has pear and white flower aromatics with a faintly bitter almond close that runs alongside the anise of the fennel. Its texture is round rather than lean, so it stands up to a béchamel instead of being erased by it, while enough acidity remains to scrub the butter and melted cheese off the palate.
Gavi DOCG: Cortese from the south east of Piedmont, tighter and more citrus driven than Arneis, with a chalky mineral finish. Choose it for contrast rather than harmony: the high acidity and low aromatic weight cut through the fat of the Toma and the Parmigiano, and the saline edge sharpens the sweetness the fennel develops in the oven.
Erbaluce di Caluso DOCG: Grown in the morainic hills north of Turin, in sight of where the grissini were invented. One of the most acidic white grapes in Italy, austere and stony, with green apple and a savoury finish. That bracing acidity is what a rich gratin needs, and the wine's restraint leaves the nutty lactic flavour of the mountain cheese in the foreground.
Dolcetto d'Alba DOC: If the table wants red, this is the one. Dolcetto is deeply fruited with black cherry and violet but carries modest soft tannin and low acidity, so it does not clash with dairy as a firmer red would. Its slightly bitter almond finish mirrors the same note in the fennel and in the toasted grissini crust.
Nebbiolo d'Alba DOC: The lighter, earlier drinking expression of Nebbiolo, with rose, tar and red cherry over fine but noticeable tannin. Serve it when the gratin is the centre of the meal rather than a side: the tannin finds the fat of the cheese sauce and the high acidity keeps the plate from feeling heavy, though it needs the browning of the crust to soften its grip.
Storage & Reheating
Refrigerator: cool the gratin to room temperature within two hours, cover tightly and refrigerate up to 3 days. Do not cover it while still warm, because the trapped steam condenses onto the crust and destroys it overnight. If you expect leftovers, bake in two smaller dishes and keep one untouched.
Freezer: freeze only the assembled unbaked gratin without its crust, wrapped in film and foil, for up to 1 month. Bake from frozen at 375°F (190°C) for 40 to 50 minutes, adding the dressed grissini for the final 15 minutes. Do not freeze the baked dish: the béchamel breaks on thawing and the fennel goes to fibre.
Reheating: use the oven, never the microwave, which steams the crust to mush and can split the sauce. Cover the portions loosely with foil and reheat at 350°F (175°C) for 15 to 18 minutes until the centre reaches 150°F (65°C), then uncover for the last 4 minutes to crisp the top. A handful of fresh crushed grissini and a little Parmigiano scattered on before that final stretch restores the crust almost completely.
Nutrition
Estimated nutrition per serving, based on 4 servings:
Calories: 620 kcal
Total Fat: 39 g
Saturated Fat: 22 g
Trans Fat: 1 g
Unsaturated Fat: 14 g
Cholesterol: 105 mg
Sodium: 1080 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 44 g
Fiber: 8 g
Total Sugars: 11 g
Added Sugars: 0 g
Protein: 26 g
Lactose: 7 g
Main micronutrients: calcium 660 mg; potassium 950 mg; vitamin A 420 mcg; vitamin C 28 mg; phosphorus 480 mg
Values are estimates and vary with brands, trimming, cooking loss and portioning.
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