Italian Braised Veal Cheeks with Polenta Taragna | Guancia di Vitello con Polenta Taragna
This is a mountain plate, and the polenta is not the side dish. Polenta taragna is made with cornmeal and buckwheat flour together, the way it is made in the Valtellina, and it arrives dark, dense and smelling of toasted grain rather than sweet corn. Under a veal cheek braised three hours in red wine it does what a purée never could: it has the body to hold the jus and enough bitterness to keep a sweet braise honest.
The cheek is the easy half: a cheap cut that wants only a deep crust, modest liquid and a slow oven. The taragna is the half that goes wrong, for reasons that have nothing to do with corn.
Yield: 4 main course servings. Prep: 30 minutes. Cook: 3 hours for the braise, 50 minutes for the polenta. Rest: 20 minutes. Total: about 4 hours. Difficulty: intermediate. Course: secondo. Region: Lombardy, Valtellina and Valchiavenna.
The Story
Taragna takes its name from the tarai, the long wooden stick used to stir the pot in the valleys above Sondrio, and the dish belongs to the stretch of Lombardy running from Morbegno through Chiavenna to the Swiss border. Buckwheat reached those valleys long before maize did, carried on the trade routes across the Alps, and it took hold because it grows where almost nothing else will. When maize arrived in the sixteenth century the mountain cooks did not swap one for the other. They mixed the two, and that is what taragna still is.
The butter and the cheese are not a modern enrichment either. The same valleys make Valtellina Casera and Bitto, cheeses born of summer pasture on the alpe, and a family with a wheel in the cellar put it in the polenta because that was the fat available.
The veal cheek has a parallel history. It is a small working muscle, two to a head, and for most of the last century it went to whoever could not afford a loin.
Ingredients
For the veal cheeks
Veal cheeks, trimmed of silverskin and surface fat, 3 lb (1.35 kg)
All purpose flour, for dusting, 1/4 cup (30 g)
Extra virgin olive oil, 2 tbsp (30 ml)
Unsalted butter, 1 tbsp (14 g)
Fine sea salt, 1 1/2 tsp (9 g)
Freshly ground black pepper, 1/2 tsp (1 g)
For the braise
Yellow onion, finely diced, 1 medium, 5 oz (150 g)
Carrot, finely diced, 1 medium, 4 oz (120 g)
Celery stalk, finely diced, 1, 2 oz (60 g)
Garlic cloves, crushed, 2
Tomato paste, 1 tbsp (16 g)
Dry red wine, 2 cups (475 ml)
Veal stock, 3 cups (710 ml)
Bay leaves, 2
Fresh rosemary, 1 sprig
Fresh sage, 4 leaves
Juniper berries, lightly crushed, 6
Whole cloves, 2
For the polenta taragna
Water, 5 cups (1.2 L)
Fine sea salt, 1 1/2 tsp (9 g)
Coarse stone ground cornmeal, 1 cup (170 g)
Buckwheat flour, 1/2 cup (60 g)
Valtellina Casera or Bitto, coarsely grated, 4 oz (115 g)
Unsalted butter, cold and cubed, 3 oz (85 g)
For finishing
Unsalted butter, cold, 1 tbsp (14 g)
Valtellina Casera, finely grated, about 1 tbsp per plate
Flat leaf parsley, finely chopped, 1 tbsp
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Preparation
Trim and season the cheeks
Veal cheeks arrive with tough silverskin on one face and soft fat on the other. Take both off with a flexible boning knife, expecting to lose about ten percent of the weight. Season all over and leave them uncovered on a rack for 30 minutes. Dust very lightly with flour just before they meet the pan and pat off everything loose, since flour not touching meat burns and turns the jus bitter.
Brown the cheeks
Heat a heavy casserole over medium high heat with the oil and butter until the foam subsides. Lay the cheeks in with space between them and do not move them for 3 to 4 minutes. Brown every side to dark chestnut, about 10 minutes, in two batches if the pan is crowded: meat that steams never recovers. Lift them out and pour off any blackened fat.
Build the soffritto and deglaze
Lower the heat, add the onion, carrot and celery with a pinch of salt and cook 8 to 10 minutes, scraping as the vegetables release water and lift the sediment. Add the garlic for the last minute, then the tomato paste, and cook it against the hot metal until it darkens to brick. Pour in the wine and reduce by half.
Braise at a bare simmer
Return the cheeks, add the stock, bay, rosemary, sage, juniper and cloves, and bring it to the point where a bubble breaks the surface every second or two. The liquid should come two thirds up the meat and no further. Cover with the lid ajar and cook at 300F (150C) for 2 hours 45 minutes to 3 hours 15 minutes, turning once halfway. They are ready when a skewer meets no resistance.
Reduce the jus
Lift the cheeks onto a warm plate and cover loosely. Strain the liquid through a fine mesh sieve into a wide saucepan, pressing the vegetables, let it settle 5 minutes and spoon off the surface fat. Reduce over medium heat until about one third remains and it coats a spoon in a thin film, 15 to 20 minutes. Taste for salt only now, since reduction concentrates it.
Cook the polenta taragna
Bring the water to a boil in a heavy bottomed pot and add the salt. Combine the cornmeal and buckwheat flour dry so they enter as one mixture, and rain them in as a thin steady stream while whisking constantly. Keep whisking 3 or 4 minutes until no dry pockets remain, then swap to a wooden spoon, drop to the lowest flame and cook 45 to 50 minutes, stirring every 4 or 5 minutes into the corners and the base. Add hot water whenever the mass stops moving easily.
Finish the taragna off the heat
Take the pot off the burner completely and wait a minute. Add the cold cubed butter in three additions, beating each in until it disappears, then the grated Casera in two handfuls, until the polenta turns glossy and pulls away from the pot as one mass. Loosen with hot water until it falls slowly from the spoon, then cover.
Glaze the cheeks and portion
Slide the rested cheeks back into the reduced jus and warm them over low heat for 5 to 8 minutes, turning once or twice so the sauce coats every surface. This is not further cooking: it is what puts the shine on the meat. Whisk the last cold butter in off the heat, then cut large cheeks in half across the grain and leave small ones whole.
Plating
Warm the plates properly, and warmer than you would for almost anything else. Taragna carries a lot of butter and cheese, and on a cold plate it stiffens into a slab within a minute. Wide shallow bowls beat flat plates: the jus needs somewhere to gather.
Spoon a generous pool of polenta slightly off centre, about 6 oz (170 g) per plate, and spread it into a shallow well rather than a dome, so it holds the jus instead of letting it run to the rim. Set the cheek into the well, cut face up.
Spoon the jus over the meat and let it pool where the polenta meets it, roughly 3 tablespoons per plate. Finish with finely grated Casera over the polenta only, never over the sauce where it would clump, a pinch of parsley and a turn of black pepper.
Professional Technique
Polenta taragna is not polenta with something added. It is a mixture of two grains that behave differently in water, and the whole technique follows from that difference. Buckwheat is not a cereal at all, it carries no gluten, and its starch gelatinizes at a lower temperature than corn starch while absorbing far more water for its weight. So a taragna thickens sooner than a plain cornmeal polenta, and it thickens from the bottom up: the layer against the metal sets and begins to scorch while the surface still looks raw.
That governs the water ratio. Here it is 5 cups (1.2 L) of water to 1 1/2 cups of combined flours, looser than a corn only polenta and deliberately so, because the buckwheat claims that extra water. Keep the corn to buckwheat proportion around two to one: push the buckwheat higher and the mass goes gluey. Mix the flours dry before they touch the water, because added separately the fine buckwheat clumps in seconds while the coarse cornmeal is still sinking.
Stirring does two different jobs at two different times, and knowing which one you are doing tells you how hard to work. For the first 3 or 4 minutes you are preventing lumps, so you whisk constantly while the starch is still free in the water. After that lumps are impossible and the whisk is useless: from then on you stir only to keep the polenta off the base, which needs a wooden spoon in the corners every 4 or 5 minutes. Whisk for 45 minutes and you will still burn the bottom, because the whisk rides above the layer that matters.
The long cooking time is not about thickness either. The polenta looks finished after 12 minutes and tastes of raw flour for another half hour, because buckwheat holds a chalky, faintly bitter note that only sustained low heat breaks down. Judge it by taste, not by the clock: let a spoonful cool on the tongue and check whether anything chalky sits behind the grain.
The butter and the cheese go in with the pot off the heat, always, and this is where most versions fail. Both are fat held in a stable emulsion by milk protein. Beaten into polenta still on a burner, that emulsion breaks: the fat separates out and rises, and what should be a glossy cream turns greasy, with oil standing on the surface and threads of cheese through it. Off the heat, with the residual warmth of the polenta doing the melting, the fat stays dispersed and the taragna is shiny rather than oily.
Texture and Moisture Control
Two consistencies have to meet correctly and both move while you work. The taragna tightens from the moment the spoon leaves it, because the starch keeps taking up water as it cools and a skin forms within minutes. Keep it covered, keep a kettle of hot water beside the pot, and slacken it immediately before plating. The target is a polenta that moves slowly when the pot is tilted and settles flat again, not one that holds a ridge.
The jus moves the other way and has a narrower window. Reduced to a thin coating film it glazes the meat and pools cleanly; reduced past that it turns sticky and tastes of concentrated salt, and the only correction is more stock and a fresh reduction. Watch the back of the spoon, not the volume in the pan.
For the meat, moisture is settled by the liquid level and by where the cheeks wait. Two thirds up is correct: the exposed top takes colour from the oven air while the submerged part stays wet. The cheeks then wait in liquid, not on a plate: ten minutes bare and the surface dries and the meat tightens visibly, ten minutes in the warm jus and it stays glossy.
Professional Mise en Place
Two clocks have to converge: the braise wants three hours and no precision, the taragna wants 50 minutes and cannot be rushed. Start the polenta when the cheeks have an hour left.
Equipment and tools
Heavy enamelled or cast iron casserole, wide enough for one layer of cheeks
Heavy bottomed saucepan for the polenta, since thin pans scorch it
Balloon whisk for the first minutes, long wooden spoon after
Fine mesh sieve, wide saucepan, metal skewer, boning knife, tongs
Prepared ahead
Cheeks trimmed and seasoned on a rack, soffritto finely diced, up to 1 day
The whole braise cooked and kept in its unstrained liquid, up to 3 days
Flours weighed and mixed dry, cheese grated coarse and fine separately
Service setup
Polenta covered on the lowest heat, kettle of hot water beside it
Cold butter cubed and waiting, for the polenta and the final jus
Cheeks sitting in the reduced jus over low heat
Bowls rather than plates and hotter than usual, parsley chopped last
Chef Tips
Buy buckwheat flour somewhere with turnover and smell it before use. It is high in fat for a flour and goes rancid faster than wheat or corn, and a bag that has sat on a warm shelf for a year carries a sour note that cooking concentrates rather than removes.
Cook the braise the day before whenever you can. Veal cheeks are better after a night in their liquid: the sauce settles, the fat lifts off as one disc, and the meat takes back some of what it gave up.
If Casera or Bitto are impossible to find, use a young semi hard mountain cheese with real character: Fontina, Asiago mezzano or a young Toma. Do not reach for Parmigiano. It is too sharp, too salty and too dry to melt into a cream, and it drags the polenta towards Emilia.
Press whatever taragna is left into an oiled tray about 3/4 inch (2 cm) deep. Chilled overnight it sets firm enough to cut into batons, and fried in butter those batons are worth cooking extra for.
Common Mistakes
Adding the butter and cheese while the polenta is still on the heat. The emulsion breaks, fat rises as visible oil and the cheese pulls into strings. Take the pot off the burner, wait a minute, then beat in cold butter first and cheese second.
Cutting the polenta time short. Taragna thickens in about 12 minutes and tastes of raw flour for another 35. Only sustained low heat clears the chalky buckwheat note, so judge by tasting a spoonful.
Covering the cheeks completely with liquid. Submerged meat poaches, loses flavour into a large volume of stock and leaves too much thin liquid to reduce. Fill to two thirds of the height of the meat.
Trusting the clock instead of the skewer. Cheeks vary in size and three hours is an estimate. If a skewer meets resistance, give it another 30 minutes covered and test again: undercooked cheek is rubbery and cannot be rescued.
Wine Pairing
Valtellina Superiore DOCG: The wine of the same valley as the taragna and the most coherent choice here. Nebbiolo from those terraced slopes keeps high acidity and a fine dusty tannin rather than a broad one: the acidity cuts through the butter and cheese in the polenta, the tannin grips the yielding cheek without weighing on a lean cut.
Sforzato di Valtellina DOCG: The same Nebbiolo dried on racks before fermentation, and fully dry in the glass despite the method. It carries deeper dried fruit and more glycerol than the Superiore, enough for a long reduced jus and for the juniper and clove in the braise.
Gattinara DOCG: Nebbiolo again but grown on the volcanic porphyry of the Alto Piemonte, where it turns iron edged and savoury rather than floral. That mineral character reads directly alongside braised veal, and the firm structure holds against grated mountain cheese.
Alto Adige DOC Lagrein: A darker, fleshier alpine red: deep violet fruit, moderate tannin and a bitter almond twist on the finish. That bitterness is why it belongs, since it runs alongside the buckwheat instead of fighting it, which few reds manage.
Bonarda dell'Oltrepò Pavese DOC: The everyday Lombard red and the informal answer, often lightly frizzante. Croatina gives dark plum fruit, a low tannin frame and a faintly bitter finish, and the light carbon dioxide scrubs the fat of the polenta off the palate as a still wine cannot.
Storage & Reheating
The cheeks and the polenta store well, but separately and never assembled. Keep the cheeks submerged in their unstrained braising liquid in an airtight container for up to 3 days, and do not reduce the sauce until the day you serve, since a reduced jus turns salty and sticky in storage. The braise improves over the first 24 hours and the fat sets overnight into a disc that lifts off whole.
Reheat the cheeks in their liquid, covered, at 300F (150C) for 25 to 30 minutes, or on the lowest burner until the meat is hot through. Never reheat them out of liquid and never in a microwave: a veal cheek in dry heat contracts and turns stringy. They freeze in their liquid for up to 3 months, thawed overnight in the refrigerator.
Polenta taragna keeps 3 days refrigerated and sets completely solid, which is normal. To bring it back, break it up in a saucepan with a splash of hot water or milk, warm it over low heat while stirring until smooth, then correct it with cold butter off the heat. Do not freeze it: the starch and the dairy separate on thawing.
Nutrition
Per serving, based on 4 main course portions:
Calories: 890 kcal
Total Fat: 47 g
Saturated Fat: 24 g
Trans Fat: 1 g
Unsaturated Fat: 21 g
Cholesterol: 265 mg
Sodium: 980 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 52 g
Fiber: 5 g
Total Sugars: 6 g
Added Sugars: 0 g
Protein: 62 g
Lactose: 1.8 g
Principal micronutrients: vitamin B12, zinc, iron, selenium, phosphorus, calcium, magnesium, manganese
These figures are estimates. The largest variables are how much braising fat is skimmed and how much cheese and butter go into the polenta.
Comments