Italian Trentino Porcini Gratin | Funghi Porcini Gratinati al Puzzone di Moena
Puzzone di Moena announces itself from the far end of a room. It is a washed rind cheese from the Val di Fassa, and its Ladin name, Spretz Tzaori, means tasty cheese, which is either an understatement or a joke depending on how close you stand. Most gratins reach for something mild and melting. Trentino reaches for the loudest cheese on the mountain, then finds the one ingredient with enough presence to stand beside it.
That ingredient is the porcino. Not dried, not hidden in a duxelles, but sliced thick through cap and stem, seared in butter until the edges turn mahogany, then laid under a sauce that carries the Puzzone in a controlled dose. Over the top goes a coarse rye crumb, because rye is what the valleys above Moena have always baked.
The result is a side dish that behaves like a main course. Served beside roast meat, game or plain polenta, it does what the best mountain cooking does: takes two things the valley produces anyway and puts them together with almost nothing else added.
Yield: 6 side servings. Prep: 30 minutes. Cook: 40 minutes. Rest: 10 minutes. Total: about 1 hour 20 minutes. Difficulty: intermediate. Course: contorno. Region: Trentino, Val di Fassa and Val di Fiemme.
The Story
Puzzone di Moena earned its DOP in 2014, but the cheese is older than the paperwork. It is made from the raw milk of Bruna Alpina and Grigio Alpina cows in the Val di Fassa, the Val di Fiemme and the Primiero, and what defines it happens after the wheel is formed. Every few days for three to eight months the rind is washed by hand with lukewarm salted water, which keeps it damp and feeds surface bacteria that break the paste down from the outside in. That is where the smell comes from, and the softness and the long savoury finish with it.
The porcini come from the same slopes. The spruce forests of the Val di Fiemme, which supply the resonance timber used by violin makers, throw up Boletus edulis from late August into October, and picking runs on permits and long custom. The malghe, the summer dairy huts on the high pastures, sat between the two harvests: cows above, mushrooms in the timber below, a wood stove in the middle. Browning mushrooms under the local cheese is not a chef invention.
What has changed is the quantity of cheese. The old malga version buried the mushrooms under Puzzone and let the oven sort it out, which was magnificent and overwhelming. Here the cheese is pulled back to a third of the weight of the mushrooms and stretched through a light milk base, so the aroma runs underneath the porcini instead of standing in front of them. The volume is down two notches.
Ingredients
For the porcini
Fresh porcini mushrooms, firm and dry, 1 3/4 lb (800 g)
Unsalted butter, 2 tbsp (28 g)
Extra virgin olive oil, 1 tbsp (15 ml)
Garlic clove, whole and lightly crushed, 1
Fresh thyme sprigs, 2
Fine sea salt, 1/2 tsp (3 g)
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
For the Puzzone cream
Whole milk, 1 1/2 cups (355 ml)
Unsalted butter, 3 tbsp (42 g)
All purpose flour, 3 tbsp (24 g)
Puzzone di Moena DOP, rind removed and grated, 5 oz (140 g)
Trentingrana or Parmigiano Reggiano, grated, 1 oz (30 g)
Freshly grated nutmeg, 1 small pinch
Fine sea salt, 1/4 tsp (1.5 g)
For the rye crust
Stale rye bread, coarsely grated, 1 cup (60 g)
Unsalted butter, melted, 2 tbsp (28 g)
Trentingrana, grated, 1/2 oz (15 g)
Flat leaf parsley, finely chopped, 1 tbsp (4 g)
For finishing
Unsalted butter for the dish, 1 tsp (5 g)
Small thyme leaves, a few per portion
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Preparation
Step 1
Clean the porcini without water. Scrape each stem base to clean flesh, brush the cap and wipe it with a barely damp cloth. Never rinse and never soak. Porcini are around ninety percent water already, and anything they take on at the sink comes back out in the pan and stops them browning. If the tubes under a cap are spongy and olive green, cut that part away.
Step 2
Slice them thick and vertically. Stand each mushroom upright and cut down through cap and stem together at a generous 1/3 inch (8 mm), so every piece carries both textures. Thin slices lose their structure in the oven and the gratin becomes a soft mass with no bite. Keep the ragged offcuts separately: they are chopped into the base later.
Step 3
Sear them in batches over real heat. Put a wide heavy skillet over medium high heat with the butter and oil, add the crushed garlic and thyme, and wait for the foam to subside. Lay in one uncrowded layer and leave it alone 2 to 3 minutes before turning. You want deep brown edges and a firm surface. A crowded pan loses temperature and the mushrooms stew. Salt each batch at the end.
Step 4
Rest the mushrooms and keep the pan juices. Move each batch to a rack over a tray rather than a plate, so liquid drains away instead of softening the surface you just built. When the porcini are done, discard the garlic and thyme and pour the buttery juice left in the skillet into the milk for the sauce. Throwing that out is the second most common error here.
Step 5
Build the milk base. Melt the 3 tablespoons of butter over medium low heat, whisk in the flour and cook the roux a full 2 minutes, until it smells like biscuit rather than raw flour. Pour in the warm milk in three additions, whisking hard after each, and simmer gently 3 to 4 minutes. Season with nutmeg and salt. It should coat a spoon lightly and still pour, since it tightens in the oven.
Step 6
Melt the Puzzone off the heat. Take the pan off the burner, wait a minute, then add the grated Puzzone and the Trentingrana in two handfuls, stirring each until smooth. Washed rind cheese is high in broken down protein and free fat and splits readily: if the sauce boils once the cheese is in, the fat separates and the top bakes out oily. Taste now and stop salting.
Step 7
Assemble the dish. Heat the oven to 400°F (200°C) and butter a shallow gratin dish about 10 by 7 inches (25 by 18 cm). Chop the reserved offcuts finely, stir them into a third of the sauce and spread that over the base. Arrange the seared slices overlapping and slightly on edge, like roof tiles, never flat in a pile. Spoon the rest of the sauce over in ribbons, leaving browned mushroom visible.
Step 8
Crust it and bake. Toss the grated rye bread with the melted butter, Trentingrana and parsley until the crumbs are coated but loose, and scatter them over without pressing down. Bake 20 to 25 minutes, until the sauce bubbles at the edges and the crust is deep brown. If the top is pale, give it 60 to 90 seconds under the broiler. Rest 10 minutes so the sauce holds a cut edge.
Plating
This dish belongs on the table in the vessel it was cooked in. Bring the gratin dish out whole on a wooden board and serve with a wide spoon that lifts a section without dragging the crust off. Warm the plates to around 130°F (55°C) first, because the Puzzone cream tightens the moment it meets a cold surface and the aroma closes with it.
If you plate individually, cut down at a slight angle and lift a piece with its layers intact, then set it crust side up slightly off centre. Grind black pepper over it at the last moment and drop two or three thyme leaves onto the crust. Nothing else belongs there. Serve it hot but not straight from the oven, beside roast veal, braised beef cheek, venison or grilled polenta, and never at room temperature, since the butterfat turns waxy as it cools.
Professional Technique
The defining technique is separating the two cooking stages of the mushroom, which most home versions collapse into one. Porcini put into a sauce raw release their water into it, dilute it and turn the dish grey and loose. Searing first drives off much of that water and builds Maillard flavour on the cut surfaces, and only then do they meet the milk. The result carries browned mushroom flavour that baking alone cannot create.
The second is dosing a washed rind cheese. Puzzone is not a melting cheese the way Fontina or Asiago are, because months of surface ripening have already broken much of its casein down, so it acts more like a strong flavouring than a structural ingredient. That is why it goes into a stabilised base: the flour in the roux holds the free fat in suspension, while the Trentingrana returns firmness and clean salt. Remove every trace of rind, where the ammonia notes concentrate.
The third is the rye crumb, a deliberate substitution for standard breadcrumb. Rye has more pentosans and less gluten and toasts darker at a lower temperature without turning sweet. Grating it on the coarse side of a box grater rather than blitzing it gives irregular shards that crisp at different rates, which is where the texture comes from.
Texture and Moisture Control
Everything difficult about this gratin is a water problem. The porcini arrive holding a great deal of it, the milk base adds more, and the oven has twenty five minutes to concentrate what remains without drying the mushrooms or splitting the cheese. The controls are set before the dish goes in: dry cleaning instead of rinsing, a hot uncrowded pan, draining the seared slices on a rack, and a sauce left looser than it should finally be, since the remaining mushroom moisture works into it during the bake.
Arrangement matters as much as cooking. Slices laid flat trap steam and the pieces in the middle end up poached; set on edge they leave channels for steam to rise through the crust, and leaving part of the browned surface unsauced does the same. A deep dish is the enemy, since depth means volume of steam. The crust survives a bubbling sauce only if the crumbs are coated in fat and kept loose: butter waterproofs each shard so it toasts rather than absorbs. Pressing them down or covering with foil gives a damp brown layer instead of a crust that cracks.
Professional Mise en Place
The searing is the only part that demands full attention, and it cannot be rushed. Everything else can be staged ahead, which is how a mountain kitchen handles it in a busy autumn.
Equipment and tools
Wide heavy skillet, cast iron or thick steel, for one uncrowded layer
Cooling rack over a tray for draining the seared mushrooms
Small heavy saucepan and balloon whisk for the milk base
Shallow gratin dish, about 10 by 7 inches (25 by 18 cm)
Prepared ahead
Porcini cleaned and sliced, up to 4 hours ahead, uncovered on a rack, refrigerated
Porcini seared, up to 4 hours ahead, cooled on the rack
Milk base without the cheese, up to 1 day ahead, refrigerated and filmed
Rye crumb with butter, cheese and parsley, up to 1 day ahead, sealed
Service setup
Oven fully preheated before the dish is assembled
Cheese stirred into the warm base off the heat, just before assembly
Gratin dish buttered and the base spread while the sauce is fluid
Crumb scattered last, loose and unpressed, never in advance
Chef Tips
Buy the porcini by feel rather than by looks. A good one is heavy for its size, the stem firm under a thumbnail, the tubes cream to pale yellow. Once those tubes darken to olive and go soft the mushroom holds far more water and will not sear. If that is all you can find, scrape the tube layer off with a spoon before slicing.
Ask for Puzzone cut fresh from the wheel and use it within days. Vacuum packed pieces left in a warm cabinet develop a sharp ammonia edge that is the packaging talking, not the cheese, and it will dominate the gratin. Pungent and farmyard is correct. Stinging at the back of the nose is not.
Keep the best six or eight seared slices aside and lay them over the sauce at the very end, before the crumb, so they sit just under the crust and keep their colour. That is the difference between a gratin that looks brown and one that looks like mushrooms.
If fresh porcini are out of season, do not attempt this with dried ones alone. Use 1 1/2 lb (680 g) of firm cultivated mushrooms seared the same way, plus 1/2 oz (15 g) of dried porcini soaked in the warm milk and chopped into the base. It becomes a mushroom gratin rather than a porcini one.
Common Mistakes
Washing the mushrooms under the tap. Porcini absorb water fast through the cut stem and the tube layer, and it all comes back out in the skillet and prevents browning. Brush, scrape and wipe with a barely damp cloth.
Slicing them too thin. At a scant 1/8 inch they collapse in the oven and the gratin loses all definition. Cut vertically through cap and stem at a generous 1/3 inch (8 mm) so each piece survives sear and bake.
Crowding the searing pan. Too many slices at once drop the pan below the point where water evaporates on contact, so the mushrooms release liquid and simmer in it. Work in two or three batches.
Leaving the rind on the Puzzone. The washed rind is where the surface bacteria live and the ammonia notes concentrate. Cut it away generously, down to clean paste, before grating.
Boiling the sauce after the cheese goes in. A washed rind cheese carries free fat and little intact protein to hold it, so heat above a simmer splits it and the gratin bakes out oily. Stir it in off the burner.
Wine Pairing
Trento DOC: The mountain metodo classico, and the most reliable answer to a dish this rich. A brut bottling has very high acidity and a fine persistent bead, both working mechanically on the palate to clear the butterfat of the Puzzone cream. Its bread and hazelnut notes from lees ageing meet the rye crust directly.
Alto Adige Gewurztraminer DOC: The classic partner for washed rind cheese anywhere in the Alps, and here it is local too. Fermented dry, it has a perfumed nose of rose and lychee over a broad, low acid, faintly oily palate. Two loud aromas that would flatten anything subtle instead meet on equal terms, and its bitter finish picks up the seared mushroom.
Teroldego Rotaliano DOC: Grown on the gravel plain of the Campo Rotaliano down the valley, this is the red Trentino actually pours with a dish like this. Dark berry fruit and a savoury, almost iron edge run alongside the browned porcini rather than over them, and the tannin is fine grained enough not to clash with the dairy.
Trentino Marzemino DOC: The lighter local red, and the right choice when the gratin is served on its own rather than beside roast meat. Marzemino is low in tannin, with sour cherry and violet aromatics and a lively acidity that handles the fat without adding structure the dish does not need. Chill it to 57°F (14°C).
Alto Adige DOC Pinot Nero: The most refined option and the best match for the porcini specifically. Grown high above Bolzano, it develops forest floor, dried herb and wild strawberry notes that sit naturally with wild mushroom, and its acidity keeps the cream sauce from closing the palate down. Choose restrained oak.
Storage & Reheating
The baked gratin keeps refrigerated, covered once fully cold, for up to 3 days. Never cover it warm: trapped steam condenses on the crust and destroys it within an hour. Store it in the baking dish rather than transferring portions, since the sauce protects the mushrooms at the edges.
Reheat in a 350°F (175°C) oven, uncovered, 15 to 18 minutes for a whole dish or 10 for a portion, until hot through and the crust has tightened again. A microwave gives a soft top and a split sauce. If the crust went soft, scatter a tablespoon of fresh buttered rye crumb over it before reheating. Do not reheat twice.
Freezing is possible at a cost. Freeze it assembled but unbaked and without the crumb, wrapped tightly, up to 1 month, then bake from frozen at 375°F (190°C) about 45 minutes, adding the buttered crumb for the last 20. The mushrooms lose firmness on thawing. Never freeze it after baking, and never freeze the Puzzone cream alone, which separates irreversibly.
Nutrition
Per serving, based on 6 side servings:
Calories: 340 kcal
Total Fat: 24 g
Saturated Fat: 14 g
Trans Fat: 0.6 g
Unsaturated Fat: 8 g
Cholesterol: 62 mg
Sodium: 480 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 16 g
Fiber: 2.5 g
Total Sugars: 4 g
Added Sugars: 0 g
Protein: 14 g
Lactose: 2.2 g
Principal micronutrients: calcium, phosphorus, vitamin D, vitamin B12, riboflavin, selenium, copper, potassium
These figures are estimates. Sodium depends heavily on how mature the Puzzone is, and lactose is low because both cheeses are matured past the point where most of it has been consumed.
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