Slow Pan Frico with Two Ages of Montasio | Frico Friulano Tradizionale
A frico made the old way is cooked twice on the same heat and turned once, and everything that matters about it happens in those two long stretches in the pan. The mixture goes in soft: boiled potato broken into rough pieces, onion stewed down to nothing, and grated Montasio. It comes out as a flat cake with a dark brittle skin on both faces and a centre that is still molten enough to pull when it is cut.
What separates this version from the quicker ones is the cheese. Two ages of Montasio go in rather than one: a young wheel to melt and bind, an aged one to brown and to salt the dish. The household that made frico in the Carnic valleys did this without thinking about it, because the pantry held whatever the wheel had turned into that month.
There is no flour, no egg, no cream and no cornstarch in this recipe. The cake holds together because potato starch and melted cheese protein are doing the work, which is also why the method is slow and the pan is never crowded or rushed.
Yield: 4 servings as a main, 6 as a contorno. Prep: 25 minutes. Cook: 50 minutes. Rest: 5 minutes. Total: about 1 hour 20 minutes. Difficulty: intermediate. Course: piatto unico or contorno. Region: Friuli Venezia Giulia, the valleys of Carnia.
The Story
Friuli organised its dairies in a way that explains this dish better than any story about mountain huts. From the end of the nineteenth century the villages ran latterie turnarie, turn dairies, where every household brought its milk to a shared room each morning and the entire day's collection went to one family, by rotation. When your turn came you carried home a whole wheel, and a few of these cooperatives still work this way. It meant an ordinary kitchen held cheese in quantity and at several stages at once, with the hard scrapings of the last turn still in the house when the new wheel arrived.
The cooking followed the architecture. The fogolar, the square raised hearth set in the middle of the Friulian house with a hood above it and benches around it, was the only fire and it burned all day. A heavy iron pan sat at the side of the embers rather than over the flame, which made slow browning the natural way to cook and fast frying almost impossible. Frico was turned by sliding the cake onto a wooden lid and returning it upside down, a movement anyone raised in those kitchens can still do without thinking.
The two ages of Montasio are the point. Fresco, at two to five months, melts cleanly and holds the potato together. Stagionato, past ten months, has lost water, concentrated its salt and developed the crystalline bite that browns into a genuine crust. Using one without the other gives you either a bland cake or a greasy one. Frico is eaten hot, cut in wedges, with white polenta and a tajut, the small glass of wine a Friulian drinks standing up.
Ingredients
For the potatoes
Yellow fleshed floury potatoes, 1 1/2 lb (680 g)
Coarse salt for the cooking water, 1 tbsp (18 g)
For the cheese
Montasio DOP fresco, 2 to 5 months, coarsely grated, 7 oz (200 g)
Montasio DOP stagionato, 10 months or more, finely grated, 5 oz (140 g)
For the pan
Yellow onion, 1 medium, about 7 oz (200 g)
Unsalted butter, 1 1/2 tbsp (21 g)
Extra virgin olive oil, 1 tbsp (15 ml)
Fine sea salt, 1/2 tsp (3 g), less if the aged cheese is very salty
Freshly ground black pepper, 1/4 tsp
For serving
White polenta, soft, 4 cups cooked (about 1 kg)
Flaky salt, a pinch
Preparation
Boiling the potatoes the day before
Put the potatoes into cold salted water with their skins on and bring them to a bare simmer, never a rolling boil, until a knife slides in with no resistance, about 30 minutes. Drain, cool completely, and refrigerate overnight if you can. Cold cooked potato has retrograded starch, which means it breaks into firm pieces instead of turning to paste in the pan. Using them warm is the commonest reason a frico collapses into mash.
Grating the two Montasio and keeping them apart
Grate the fresco on the large holes of a box grater and the stagionato on the small ones, into separate bowls. They go into the pan at different moments and for different reasons. Take both out of the refrigerator twenty minutes ahead, since cheese at 40°F (4°C) sweats fat before it melts. If the fresco is too sticky to grate, give it ten minutes in the freezer.
Stewing the onion until the water has gone
Slice the onion very thinly. Melt the butter with the olive oil in a heavy 10 inch (25 cm) pan over low heat, add the onion with a small pinch of the salt and cook for 15 to 18 minutes, stirring now and then, until it is completely soft, pale gold, and the pan is dry again. Any water left in the onion goes straight into the cake and stops the crust forming.
Adding the potatoes and drying the mixture out
Peel the cold potatoes and break them into rough pieces the size of a large olive, using your hands rather than a knife so the surfaces stay torn and bind better. Add them to the onion with the remaining salt and the pepper and cook over medium heat for 8 to 10 minutes, turning occasionally and pressing lightly, until the edges colour and the pan smells toasted. You are driving off steam, not browning them fully.
Folding in the cheese in two stages
Take the pan off the heat and let it stand a minute so the metal drops below the temperature that makes cheese seize. Add all of the fresco and fold it through until it is threaded evenly among the potatoes; the residual heat is enough to soften it. Scatter two thirds of the stagionato over the top and fold once, no more, keeping the last third aside. Overworking now squeezes fat out of the young cheese.
Pressing the cake and browning the first face
Return the pan to medium low heat, press the mixture into an even cake reaching the sides, and scatter half the reserved stagionato around the edge, where it melts onto the metal and fuses into the crust. Cook without touching it for 12 to 15 minutes. Shake the pan at ten minutes: when the cake moves in one piece it has released. If it drags, it needs more time.
Turning it and browning the second face
Slide the cake onto a flat lid or a plate wider than the pan, cover it with the pan turned upside down and invert the two together. Scatter the last of the stagionato around the edge and cook the second face for another 10 to 12 minutes. Rest the frico in the pan off the heat for 5 minutes before cutting, so the melted cheese sets just enough to hold a wedge.
Plating
Frico is cut at the table, not in the kitchen. Slide the whole cake onto a warm wooden board or a flat plate, crust side up, and bring it out intact so the first thing anyone hears is the knife going through the skin. Cut it in six wedges with a sharp heavy blade in one downward movement rather than sawing, which tears the surface.
The traditional partner is soft white polenta, spooned onto the plate first and left in a loose pool rather than shaped. Set the wedge partly over it, so one edge softens while the other stays brittle. Yellow polenta works but is sweeter and pushes the dish towards a maize flavour the Carnic version does not have.
Serve the plates warm rather than hot, around 140°F (60°C), and put nothing else on them. A pinch of flaky salt on the crust is the only finish this dish takes, because the aged Montasio has already supplied the seasoning.
Professional Technique
The two cheeses are doing two different jobs and the recipe is built around keeping them apart until the last moment. Young Montasio at two to five months still holds a high proportion of moisture and its protein network stretches rather than breaks, which is what binds the potato. Aged Montasio past ten months has lost water, concentrated its salt and begun to develop tyrosine crystals; it does not stretch, it browns. Folding the fresco in off the heat and reserving the stagionato for the pan surface means each one works where it is useful.
The crust is a Maillard reaction between milk protein and the residual sugars in the potato, on dry metal at around 300°F (150°C). It needs contact and stillness. Every time the cake is lifted to check it, the layer that has begun to set breaks and has to form again, which is why the first face gets twelve minutes undisturbed and the pan is shaken rather than probed.
The flip frightens people and it is mostly a question of timing. A cake that has released slides as one piece when the pan is shaken; one that has not will tear whatever you do. If the flip goes wrong the frico is untidy, not ruined: press the pieces back together and the second face will fuse them.
Texture and Moisture Control
The dish is a contest between water and fat. Water comes from the potato and the onion and has to leave before the cheese goes in, because steam trapped under melted cheese has nowhere to escape and softens the crust from beneath. That is why the onion is stewed until the pan is dry and the potatoes cook a further eight minutes alone.
Fat is the opposite problem. Montasio at either age releases a good deal of butterfat when it is overheated, and once that fat has separated it pools at the edge and fries the cake rather than binding it. The defences are low heat, adding the fresco off the flame, and folding rather than stirring. If a pool of yellow fat appears around the rim during cooking, tilt the pan and spoon it out rather than letting it soak back in.
The finished contrast is a skin of perhaps 1/8 inch (3 mm) that shatters under a knife over an interior that is soft but not runny. The 5 minute rest produces the second half of that. Cut at once and the cheese is liquid and the wedge falls apart; after 20 minutes the interior sets solid and the crust goes leathery.
Professional Mise en Place
The only awkward element is the potato, which needs cooking a day ahead. Everything else is a matter of having both cheeses grated and separated before the pan goes on the heat.
Equipment and tools
Heavy 10 inch (25 cm) pan, cast iron or carbon steel, with sloping sides
A flat lid or plate wider than the pan, for the turn
Box grater, used on both hole sizes
Wide flexible spatula and a wooden spoon
Warm wooden board for serving
Prepared ahead
Potatoes boiled in their skins, cooled and refrigerated, 1 day ahead
Both Montasio grated separately, up to 4 hours ahead, covered and kept cool
Onion sliced thinly, up to 1 day ahead
Polenta cooked and held soft over a bain marie
Service setup
Cheese out of the refrigerator 20 minutes before it goes into the pan
The reserved third of aged Montasio in a small dish, split in two for the two faces
Lid or plate for the turn within reach before the first face is finished
Plates warm at around 140°F (60°C), board warm and dry
Chef Tips
Taste the aged Montasio before you salt anything. A stagionato at eighteen months can carry twice the salt of one at ten, and the recipe is written for the milder end of that range. If yours is sharp and crystalline, cut the added salt to a pinch and season the potatoes only.
If you cannot find two ages, buy semistagionato at around six months and add a tablespoon of grated Parmigiano for the crust. It is not the same dish, but it beats a single young cheese, which gives a frico that tastes of melted fat.
Keep the pan smaller than seems sensible. A 10 inch (25 cm) pan gives a cake about 3/4 inch (2 cm) thick, which is the depth at which the centre stays soft while both faces crisp. Spread the same quantity into a 12 inch (30 cm) pan and you get a thin dry wafer instead.
Do not add flour, egg or breadcrumbs to help it hold. Each makes the cake easier to turn and worse to eat, setting into a pancake texture that mutes the cheese. If the mixture feels loose, the answer is more time in the pan.
Common Mistakes
Using warm or freshly boiled potatoes. Hot cooked potato is full of gelatinised starch that turns to paste the moment it is worked, and the frico becomes a heavy mash. Boil them the day before and use them cold.
Adding the cheese over the heat. Montasio dropped onto a hot pan seizes into rubbery strands and releases its fat immediately. Take the pan off the flame, wait a minute, then fold the young cheese through the residual heat.
Turning the cake too early. A frico that has not released will tear along the middle and leave half its crust stuck to the metal. Shake the pan instead of lifting the edge: when the whole cake slides as one piece, it is ready.
Cooking it fast over high heat. The outside goes dark within four minutes while the interior is still cold and the cheese has not melted evenly. Medium low for twelve minutes a side is the method.
Making it too thick. Above about 1 inch (2.5 cm) the centre never reaches the temperature the cheese needs, and the cake stays pale and wet inside no matter how long the outside cooks. Use a smaller pan or less mixture.
Cutting it straight out of the pan. Without the 5 minute rest the melted cheese is still liquid and the wedge collapses on the way to the plate. Five minutes is enough, and twenty is too many.
Wine Pairing
Pignolo Friuli Colli Orientali DOC: The Friulian red for the aged cheese in this version, and the one that justifies a serious bottle beside a peasant dish. Pignolo is dense, firmly tannic and slow to open, and those tannins find the butterfat of the Montasio and scrub it off the palate. Decant it for an hour and serve at 61°F (16°C).
Erbaluce di Caluso DOCG: An alpine white with unusually high fixed acidity and almost no aromatic fuss, which is what a rich cake of potato and cheese asks for. It works like a knife rather than a partner, resetting the palate between wedges, and its green apple and hazelnut finish sits well next to the browned crust.
Valle d'Aosta Petite Arvine: From the highest vineyards in Italy, a mountain answer to a mountain dish. Petite Arvine has a saline, almost grapefruit edge and real weight of texture, so it meets the cheese instead of vanishing under it, and its salinity runs alongside the stagionato without adding sweetness.
Oltrepò Pavese Metodo Classico DOCG: A dry traditional method sparkling wine built on Pinot Nero, and the most effective foil here for mechanical reasons. The bubbles and bracing acidity lift the fat off the tongue, and the autolytic bread and brioche notes echo the toasted crust. Serve it at 46°F (8°C).
Alto Adige DOC Pinot Nero: The light red for anyone who wants one, from just over the mountains. Alpine Pinot Nero keeps high acidity and fine tannin and carries wild strawberry and forest floor notes that suit the onion sweetness in the cake. Serve it cool, around 57°F (14°C), where it stays lively enough to cut through the cheese.
Storage & Reheating
Cooked frico keeps for 3 days in the refrigerator, wrapped in paper inside a container rather than plastic film, which traps condensation against the crust. Cool it to room temperature on a rack first. Whole wedges keep better than a cut cake.
Reheat in a dry pan over medium low heat, 4 minutes a side, with no fat added; there is more than enough in the cheese. The crust comes back almost completely. A 375°F (190°C) oven for 8 minutes on a rack also works and is easier for several wedges at once. Never use a microwave, which melts the interior and leaves the crust limp and chewy.
Frico freezes acceptably for up to 2 months, wrapped individually in paper and sealed. Thaw the wedges overnight in the refrigerator and reheat in the pan, never from frozen. The uncooked mixture does not freeze at all: the potato turns watery and the cake will not hold together.
Nutrition
Per serving, based on 4 main course portions and excluding the polenta:
Calories: 510 kcal
Total Fat: 31 g
Saturated Fat: 19 g
Trans Fat: 0.8 g
Unsaturated Fat: 10 g
Cholesterol: 90 mg
Sodium: 940 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 32 g
Fiber: 3 g
Total Sugars: 4 g
Added Sugars: 0 g
Protein: 26 g
Lactose: 0.5 g
Principal micronutrients: calcium, phosphorus, vitamin A, vitamin B12, zinc, potassium
These figures are estimates. Sodium varies most of all, since an aged Montasio can carry well over twice the salt of a young one.
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