Italian Ricotta Gnocchi with Porcini Mushrooms and Taleggio Fondue | Gnocchi di Ricotta con Porcini e Fonduta di Taleggio
This plate comes entirely out of the Bergamo Prealps: a washed rind cheese born in one narrow valley, porcini cut from the woods above it, and cheese dumplings that exist because mountain dairies never wasted whey. Nothing in it is complicated. What it asks for is temperature control, because the fondue and the gnocchi both collapse if they get too hot.
There is no potato in the gnocchi at all. They are ricotta, egg, grated Parmigiano and a measured amount of flour, cut into short pillows that cook in two minutes. The porcini go into a dry pan and take colour before any fat joins them, and the Taleggio melts into milk and cream with a yolk, so it pours in a ribbon rather than stretching into strings.
Everything sits in a narrow band of warmth: the fondue at about 150°F (65°C), the gnocchi straight from the water, the mushrooms warm rather than searing. Serve it as a first course in October, when the porcini are in and the valley dairies are selling cheese from the autumn milk.
Yield: 4 first course servings. Draining: 12 hours. Prep: 45 minutes. Cook: 25 minutes. Difficulty: intermediate. Course: primo. Region: Lombardy, Val Taleggio and the Bergamo valleys.
The Story
Val Taleggio is a short, steep valley in the Bergamo Prealps, reached through a gorge so tight that for centuries the only way in was a mule track cut into the rock. The cheese takes its name from it. Its older name, stracchino, comes from the Lombard word stracco, meaning tired, and it describes the cows rather than the cheese: animals walking down from the summer pastures in autumn, giving milk richer and scarcer than that of the high season. That milk became a square cheese, washed with brine as it ripened and matured in the natural caves of the valley.
Those caves are why Taleggio tastes as it does. Bacteria on the damp washed rind break the paste down from the outside in, which is why a ripe wheel is almost running under the crust while the centre stays chalky. The flavour is meaty and faintly barnyard, far stronger in the nose than on the tongue. Taleggio took DOP status in 1996, and the protected zone now covers much of Lombardy plus Novara and Treviso, but the cave ripened wheels remain the reference.
The mushrooms come off the same slopes. Boletus edulis fruits in the chestnut and beech woods of the Bergamasque valleys from late August into November, and picking is regulated by permit, with daily limits and a minimum cap size. As for the dumplings, Lombardy has an old habit of building them from soft cheese rather than potato: the malfatti of Brescia, ricotta and spinach barely held together with flour, are the best known case. This recipe treats ricotta as structure rather than economy.
Ingredients
For the ricotta gnocchi
Whole milk ricotta, 1 lb (450 g) weighed before draining
Large egg, 1
Large egg yolk, 1
Finely grated Parmigiano Reggiano, 3/4 cup (70 g)
All purpose flour, 3/4 cup (95 g), plus more for the board
Fine sea salt, 1/2 tsp (3 g)
Freshly grated nutmeg, 1 small pinch
For the porcini
Fresh porcini, firm and dry, 12 oz (340 g)
Unsalted butter, 2 tbsp (30 g)
Extra virgin olive oil, 1 tbsp (15 ml)
Garlic clove, lightly crushed, 1
Fresh thyme sprigs, 3
Dry white wine, 2 tbsp (30 ml)
Fine sea salt and black pepper, to taste
For the Taleggio fondue
Taleggio DOP, rind removed, in small cubes, 6 oz (170 g)
Whole milk, 1/2 cup (120 ml)
Heavy cream, 1/4 cup (60 ml)
Large egg yolk, 1
Cornstarch, 1 tsp (3 g)
For finishing
Unsalted butter, 1 tbsp (15 g)
Finely grated Parmigiano Reggiano, 2 tbsp (12 g)
Flat leaf parsley, finely chopped, 1 tsp
Coarse salt, 1 tbsp (18 g) per 4 quarts (3.8 l) of gnocchi water
Preparation
Draining the ricotta overnight
Set the ricotta in a sieve lined with a double layer of cheesecloth, rest it over a bowl clear of the liquid, cover and refrigerate 12 hours. Weigh it afterwards: you want about 13 oz (370 g) of drained curd. Never press or wring the cloth, which drives fat out with the water and leaves the curd mealy.
Mixing and resting the dough
Break the drained curd up with a fork, then work in the whole egg, the yolk, the Parmigiano, the salt and the nutmeg until smooth and slack. Add the flour in two additions, folding only until the last streak vanishes. The dough should hold a fingerprint and just leave the side of the bowl. Cover and refrigerate 30 minutes: hydrated flour turns a sticky mixture workable without more flour.
Rolling and cutting the gnocchi
Flour the board lightly and turn out a quarter of the dough at a time, keeping the rest cold. Roll it under flat hands into a rope about 3/4 inch (2 cm) thick and cut straight across into even pieces. Do not use a ridged board: without potato starch the grooves only tear the surface. Lay the pieces well apart on a floured tray and refrigerate uncovered.
Cleaning and searing the porcini
Never put porcini under a tap. Scrape the stems, wipe the caps with a damp cloth and cut away anything soft or tunnelled. Slice lengthways through cap and stem a scant 1/4 inch (6 mm) thick. Heat a wide pan over a strong flame with no fat in it and lay the slices in one layer. Leave them 2 minutes, until marked and no longer weeping, then turn and give them a minute more.
Finishing the mushrooms with butter and thyme
Add the olive oil, butter, crushed garlic and thyme, drop to medium and baste the porcini in the foaming butter for a minute. Pour in the wine and let it go completely. Season only now: salt at the start would have pulled water out and steamed them. Remove the garlic and the thyme stalks and slide the pan off the heat. The slices should be glossy and firm in the centre.
Melting the Taleggio fondue
Whisk the cornstarch into the cold milk until smooth, add the cream and bring it to a bare tremble in a small heavy pan. Drop the flame to its lowest and add the Taleggio a few cubes at a time, waiting for each addition to disappear. Once the cheese has gone, take the pan off the heat, wait half a minute, whisk in the yolk and return it for no more than 30 seconds. It should read about 150°F (65°C) and fall from the spoon in a ribbon.
Salting the water and boiling the gnocchi
Bring 4 quarts (3.8 l) of water to a lively boil and salt it with 1 tbsp (18 g) of coarse salt, less than you would use for dried pasta, since the dumplings already carry salt and a great deal of Parmigiano. Drop the flame until the surface only shivers: a rolling boil knocks them apart. Slide in half of them, wait for them to rise, count 45 seconds, lift them out with a spider, then repeat.
Bringing the pan together
Melt the finishing butter in the mushroom pan over low heat with two tablespoons of the gnocchi water, swirling until it turns cloudy and thickens slightly. Add the drained gnocchi and the porcini, tilt the pan and roll everything over two or three times. Never stir with a spoon and never return it to a high flame. Off the heat, scatter the Parmigiano and the parsley and roll once more.
Plating
Warm the bowls, but only just. Plates from a hot cupboard keep cooking the gnocchi and push the fondue past the point where it holds, so run them under hot water and dry them. A shallow bowl with a wide flat base beats a deep one, since the fondue needs to spread rather than pool.
Spoon three tablespoons of fondue into each base and turn the bowl so it runs out into a disc. Lift the gnocchi in, six or seven per portion, setting them on the fondue rather than mixing them through, so the last spoonful still finds cheese underneath. Lay the porcini over them, best marked faces up.
Finish with black pepper and a little of the pan butter poured from the side. No extra grated cheese at the table, which tightens the fondue, and no herbs beyond the parsley already in the pan. Send the plates out at once: the window is about three minutes.
Professional Technique
The technique that decides this plate is handling a washed rind cheese in liquid, which behaves nothing like a hard alpine cheese. Taleggio is high in moisture and already well broken down from the rind inward, so it does not need heat to flow. Push it past about 160°F (71°C) and its protein network contracts and squeezes fat out, which is the greasy pool that ruins most attempts at this sauce. The cornstarch interrupts that: dispersed in cold milk, it coats the casein and keeps the strands from knitting. The yolk, added off the heat, supplies lecithin to hold the released fat in suspension.
The second technique is the dry sear, and it exists because a fresh porcino is roughly nine tenths water. Fat added at the start traps that water against the surface and the slices poach in their own juice, coming out slack and grey. A hot dry pan drives the moisture off as steam and lets the sugars on the cut face brown. Butter and garlic follow, and the wine later still to lift what has caught on the pan.
Texture and Moisture Control
Every problem here is a water problem. Ricotta is a curd of whey proteins holding a great deal of free liquid, and every gram left in the tub has to be answered with flour in the bowl. Twelve hours of passive draining takes a pound down to about 13 oz (370 g), and at that weight 3/4 cup (95 g) of flour binds it. Skip the draining and you will need half as much again, at which point the dumplings turn dense and taste of paste. The ratio worth holding in your head is by weight: about four parts drained curd to one part flour.
Heat governs everything else. The gnocchi water stays below a boil and deliberately undersalted, since a violent surface breaks the dumplings and the cheese inside is already salty. The fondue lives roughly between 140°F (60°C) and 160°F (71°C), warm enough to pour and cool enough to stay emulsified, and the final tossing happens off the flame. If it tightens, loosen it with hot gnocchi water rather than cream. If it splits, pull it off the heat, drop in an ice cube and whisk hard; the shock usually brings it back.
Professional Mise en Place
The draining is the only long task and it happens the day before. On the day the gnocchi can be shaped hours ahead and the mushrooms seared and held, while the fondue wants to be made close to service.
Equipment and tools
Fine sieve and cheesecloth, set over a bowl
Kitchen scale, to check the drained weight of the ricotta
Small heavy saucepan and a whisk for the fondue
Wide heavy pan that holds the porcini in one layer
Spider, and a floured tray that fits in the refrigerator
Prepared ahead
Ricotta drained 12 hours in advance and weighed
Gnocchi shaped up to 4 hours ahead, uncovered on a floured tray
Porcini cleaned and sliced up to 3 hours ahead, never in water
Parmigiano grated and parsley chopped on the day
Shaped gnocchi frozen on the tray, then bagged, for up to 1 month
Service setup
Gnocchi water up and holding just below a boil
Fondue warm over a bain marie, covered, whisked before each portion
Mushrooms seared and held in their pan off the heat
Bowls barely warm, never hot from a cupboard
A ladle of gnocchi water within reach to loosen the fondue
Chef Tips
Boil one gnoccho alone before you commit the tray. If it holds its shape for the full 45 seconds the dough is right. If it frays, fold in another tablespoon of flour. If it feels tight and bouncy you have already gone too far.
Buy Taleggio from a counter and ask for a piece from the middle of the wheel. The paste nearest the rind is more broken down and stronger, excellent on a board but overwhelming in a fondue. Cut the rind away generously, taking 1/8 inch (3 mm) of paste with it.
If fresh porcini are out of season, do not swap in another fresh mushroom and call it the same dish. Soak 1 oz (28 g) of dried porcini in warm water, use them alongside 10 oz (280 g) of firm cremini seared the same way, and add two tablespoons of the strained liquid with the wine.
Grate the Parmigiano on the finest holes you own. Coarse shreds sit in the fondue as separate threads and never dissolve, while a powder disappears into the butter and thickens the pan sauce evenly.
Common Mistakes
Using the ricotta straight from the tub. Undrained curd carries so much whey that the dough needs nearly double the flour, and the result is heavy and floury. Twelve hours in a lined sieve costs only planning, and the scale tells you when it is done.
Kneading the dough. This is not bread. Folding the flour in until it just disappears keeps the gluten undeveloped and the dumplings tender; a worked dough turns rubbery and tastes of raw flour.
Boiling the gnocchi hard. A rolling boil tears soft ricotta dumplings apart and clouds the water with dissolved dough. Hold the surface at a shiver and lift them out rather than tipping them into a colander.
Letting the fondue simmer. Taleggio taken past about 160°F (71°C) breaks and releases its fat as a slick. Melt it on the lowest heat, add the yolk off the flame, and hold it in a bain marie.
Washing the porcini. A mushroom that is nine tenths water absorbs more the moment it meets the tap, and it will steam rather than brown however hot the pan. Scrape, wipe and cut away what is damaged.
Salting the mushrooms too early. Salt on the cut face draws moisture out before the surface can colour. Season after the wine has gone.
Wine Pairing
Valtellina Superiore DOCG: The Lombard mountain red and the most coherent bottle here, grown on the terraces of the Valtellina from the Nebbiolo they call Chiavennasca. Its tannin is fine and dusty rather than gripping, so it never fights the ricotta, while the dried rose and tar of an older bottle run alongside the porcini. The acidity cuts a sauce built on milk, cream and a yolk.
Franciacorta DOCG: A metodo classico from the moraine hills near Brescia, and the answer whenever a plate is this rich. The fine persistent bead scrubs the fondue off the palate, while the bread and hazelnut character from the lees picks up the toasted note on the mushrooms. Choose a Brut over an Extra Brut here.
Lugana DOC: Grown on heavy clay at the southern end of Lake Garda from Turbiana, this is a white with real weight and a saline, almost stony finish. It has the body to sit under a cheese sauce without vanishing, and a bottle with three years on it gains a waxy depth that suits a washed rind.
Alto Adige DOC Pinot Nero: Pinot Nero from the high slopes around Mazon is pale, cool and aromatic, and it does what none of the others manage: it echoes the mushrooms directly, with an undergrowth character that grows in bottle. Serve it at 57°F (14°C). Light tannin and bright red fruit lift a heavy plate instead of adding to it.
Nebbiolo d'Alba DOC: The earlier drinking face of Nebbiolo, from the sandier soils around Alba, and a sound choice when the Valtellina bottle is not on the shelf. It brings the same firm acidity and sour cherry with less structure to unpick, which suits a first course better than a Barolo would.
Storage & Reheating
Raw shaped gnocchi store best. Freeze them solid and well spaced on the floured tray, then bag them for up to 1 month and cook them from frozen in the same trembling water, allowing 90 seconds after they rise. Do not refrigerate raw gnocchi beyond about 4 hours: the flour keeps hydrating and they weep into the tray.
The fondue keeps 2 days refrigerated in a sealed container. Rewarm it in a bowl over barely simmering water, loosening with a tablespoon of hot milk. Never over direct heat and never in a microwave, both of which take it past the point where the yolk can hold the fat.
Assembled, the dish does not store and cannot honestly be reheated. Turn leftovers into something else: spread gnocchi and mushrooms in a small buttered dish, spoon the fondue over, dust with Parmigiano and give it 8 minutes under a hot grill. That is a good gratin, not this recipe.
Nutrition
Per serving, based on 4 first course portions:
Calories: 610 kcal
Total Fat: 38 g
Saturated Fat: 21 g
Trans Fat: 0.8 g
Unsaturated Fat: 14 g
Cholesterol: 215 mg
Sodium: 890 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 33 g
Fiber: 2 g
Total Sugars: 5 g
Added Sugars: 0 g
Protein: 31 g
Lactose: 4 g
Principal micronutrients: calcium, phosphorus, selenium, copper, potassium, vitamin B2, vitamin B12, vitamin D
These figures are estimates. Sodium moves with the Parmigiano and with how hard the water is salted, and the saturated fat depends on the ripeness of the Taleggio.
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