Italian Leek and Fontina Lasagne | Lasagne Rivisitate ai Porri e Fontina
There is no tomato in this lasagne and no ragu. It is built the way the western Alps cook, on butter, leeks and Fontina, and the plate turns on one ingredient behaving well under heat. Fontina DOP melts into something ropey when it is treated carelessly and into something silken when it is not.
The revisited part is the sauce. Instead of a bechamel with grated cheese stirred in at the end, the Fontina is handled as a fonduta valdostana: cubed, soaked in milk, melted gently, finished off the heat with egg yolks. A little light bechamel then stabilises it so it can be layered, baked and cut without breaking.
Under it sits a pound of leeks stewed in butter until they collapse into something close to a jam. Leeks give up a great deal of water, and a lasagne with no tomato and no meat has nowhere to hide it. Toasted breadcrumb and hazelnut on top supply the one crisp note.
Yield: 6 servings. Prep: 50 minutes. Fontina soaking: 4 hours or overnight. Cook: 1 hour 10 minutes. Rest: 20 minutes. Difficulty: intermediate to advanced. Course: primo. Region: Valle d'Aosta and the Cuneo plain in Piedmont.
The Story
Fontina is one of the few Italian cheeses whose name appears in writing before the modern cheese trade existed, in Valle d'Aosta accounts from the second half of the fifteenth century. The rules today are narrow: milk from Valdostana cows only, from a single milking, raw and whole, worked within two hours, the wheels matured at least eighty days in cool humid cellars, many of them former military tunnels at Valpelline.
The dish the valley built on it is fonduta valdostana, the direct ancestor of the sauce used here. Cubes of Fontina are covered in milk for hours, which is chemistry rather than decoration: the milk hydrates the paste so the cheese melts smoothly instead of stringing. The soaked cheese is then warmed with butter and bound with egg yolks.
The leeks come from the other side of the watershed. Around Cervere, on sandy ground left by the Stura river in the province of Cuneo, a long pale leek has been grown for centuries and is celebrated each autumn at the village fair. It is sweeter and less sulphurous than a supermarket leek, and sweetness is what keeps a cheese this rich finishable.
Ingredients
For the fresh pasta sheets
Italian 00 flour, 1 1/2 cups (200 g)
Durum wheat semola rimacinata, 1/2 cup (80 g)
Large eggs, 3
Extra virgin olive oil, 1 tsp (5 ml)
Fine sea salt, 1/2 tsp (3 g)
For the stewed leeks
Leeks, white and pale green only, trimmed weight 1 lb 2 oz (500 g)
Unsalted butter, 3 tbsp (45 g)
Extra virgin olive oil, 1 tbsp (15 ml)
Dry white wine, 1/3 cup (80 ml)
Vegetable stock, unsalted, 1/2 cup (120 ml)
Fresh thyme sprigs, 2
Fine sea salt, 3/4 tsp (4.5 g)
Freshly ground white pepper, to taste
For the Fontina fonduta
Fontina DOP, rind removed, in 1/2 in (1 cm) cubes, 9 oz (250 g)
Whole milk for soaking, 1 cup (240 ml)
Large egg yolks, 2
Unsalted butter, 1 tbsp (15 g)
Freshly grated nutmeg, 1 small pinch
Freshly ground white pepper, to taste
For the light bechamel base
Whole milk, 1 1/2 cups (360 ml)
Unsalted butter, 2 tbsp (30 g)
Italian 00 flour, 3 tbsp (24 g)
Fine sea salt, 1/2 tsp (3 g)
Bay leaf, 1
For assembly and finishing
Parmigiano Reggiano aged 24 months, grated, 2 oz (55 g)
Unsalted butter for the dish, 1 tbsp (15 g)
Dry breadcrumbs, coarse, 3 tbsp (25 g)
Piedmont hazelnuts, toasted and chopped, 2 tbsp (18 g)
Fine sea salt for the water, 1 tbsp (18 g) per 4 quarts (4 litres)
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Preparation
Soak the Fontina in milk
Do this first, the night before if you can and four hours ahead at the least. Cut the rind off completely, since it is salty and never melts, cube the cheese and cover it with the milk. Refrigerate. The milk hydrates the casein network and is why a fonduta comes out smooth.
Make the pasta dough
Mound the 00 flour and the semola, make a well and break in the eggs with the oil and salt. Draw the flour in with a fork, then knead firmly for 10 minutes until the dough springs back slowly. The semola is there for bite and for a surface with enough tooth to hold sauce. Rest it 30 minutes.
Clean and slice the leeks properly
Leeks are grown in ridged soil and carry grit deep inside, and one gritty bite ruins the plate. Split each one lengthways to within an inch of the root, fan the layers under cold running water and work the sand out with your thumbs. Slice into 1/4 in (6 mm) half moons, never finer.
Stew the leeks until they collapse
Melt the butter with the oil in a wide saute pan over low heat, add the leeks with the salt and thyme and cover. Sweat 20 minutes without colouring. Salt at the start, not the end: it draws water out of the cells and speeds the collapse. Uncover, add the wine and cook it off, then add the stock and continue 15 minutes until the pan is almost dry. Discard the thyme and cool.
Build the light bechamel base
Warm the milk with the bay leaf. Melt the butter, whisk in the flour and cook the roux over medium low heat for 2 minutes, until it smells of biscuit but has taken no colour. Add the hot milk in three stages, whisking hard, and simmer 5 minutes. It should be looser than a classic bechamel, because half its body comes from the cheese.
Melt the Fontina and finish it off the heat
Drain the cheese, keeping the milk, and set a wide bowl over barely trembling water. Add the Fontina with the butter and 3 tablespoons of the soaking milk, stirring steadily and staying below 150°F (65°C). When it is molten and glossy, lift the bowl off the water, wait a minute, then beat in the yolks one at a time. Add nutmeg and white pepper.
Combine the two sauces into one
Whisk the warm bechamel into the fonduta in a steady stream rather than the other way round, which stops the cheese seizing against a colder mass. You want one pale gold sauce with real body, about the thickness of custard, and it never goes back on direct heat. Reserve a third for the top and stir a third of the Parmigiano into the rest.
Blanch the sheets al dente
Roll the dough to about 1 mm and cut sheets to fit the dish. Bring 4 quarts (4 litres) of water to a rolling boil with 1 tablespoon (18 g) of salt, deliberately less than for a plate of pasta because the dish already carries two salty cheeses. Blanch two sheets at a time for 45 seconds only, then cool them in water and lay them on damp cloths.
Layer the lasagne
Butter an 8 by 11 in (20 by 28 cm) dish and spread two spoonfuls of sauce on the base. Build five layers of pasta, a thin even spread of sauce, a loose scatter of leeks and a dusting of Parmigiano. Never heap the leeks, and stop the sauce half an inch short of the walls so it does not burn. Finish with pasta, the reserved sauce and the last Parmigiano.
Bake, crisp the top and rest it
Heat the oven to 350°F (175°C). Cover loosely with foil and bake 30 minutes, then uncover, scatter the breadcrumbs and hazelnuts over the top and give it 12 to 15 minutes more, until the surface is gold with darker blisters. Deep brown means the cheese underneath has separated. Rest 20 minutes before cutting.
Plating
Serve on warm plates at around 130°F (55°C), not hot ones. A plate from a warming drawer keeps the fat liquid long enough for the slice to slump. A cold plate does the opposite and sets the cheese into something waxy within a minute.
Cut with a thin sharp knife, wiping the blade between portions, and lift each slice with an offset spatula slid right to the bottom so the base layer comes up too. A rested lasagne gives a clean rectangle with five visible strata. Set it slightly off centre.
Finish with a spoonful of warm sauce drawn alongside the slice rather than poured over it, a few grains of hazelnut crumble and one turn of black pepper. Nothing green goes on top: the crisp surface is the only garnish needed.
Professional Technique
The core of this recipe is the marriage of two sauces that behave in opposite ways under heat. A fonduta is a fat in water emulsion held by casein: above about 175°F (80°C) the network contracts, squeezes out the butterfat and leaves oil under a rubbery mass. A bechamel is starch thickened and nearly indestructible. Whisking the two together transfers that stability to the cheese, and the swollen starch granules physically stop the casein clumping in the oven.
The milk soak is the second technique and the one most home cooks have never heard of. Fontina is a semi cooked paste with a tight protein network that stretches into ropes when heated dry. Hours in cold milk let water and lactose penetrate the curd so the protein swells, and the strands then slide past one another instead of knitting.
The third is temperature discipline on the yolks. Yolk proteins begin to set around 149°F (65°C) and are fully coagulated by 158°F (70°C). Added over steam they scramble into flecks that never smooth out. Off the water and a minute cooler, the mixture holds just enough heat to thicken them gently, as in a carbonara finished off the flame.
Texture and Moisture Control
A lasagne without tomato or ragu has a tight moisture budget, and every drop comes from the leeks or the sauce. Leeks are roughly 83 percent water, so a pound carries most of a cup of liquid, and if it is still in them at assembly it runs out in the oven and pools under the bottom sheet. The long sweat and the uncovered reduction drive it off first.
The sauce carries the opposite risk. Too thick and it will not reach the corners, leaving leathery pasta where it never touched. Too thin and it soaks into the sheets in ten minutes, leaving nothing creamy in the middle. Custard thickness is the target, and the blanched sheets are the buffer, hydrating further as they draw liquid from the sauce.
The 20 minute rest does the final work. Straight from the oven the starch is mobile and the cheese fat entirely liquid, so the dish behaves like a hot liquid in a shallow box. As it falls towards 140°F (60°C) the starch retrogrades and the butterfat firms, and only then will the layers hold a knife.
Professional Mise en Place
This dish has one long passive step and several components that keep well, which makes it friendly to advance work. Everything except the bake can be done the day before.
Equipment and tools
Pasta machine with a sheet roller, or a long rolling pin
Wide saute pan with a lid, heavy saucepan for the bechamel
Stainless bowl that sits in a saucepan without touching the water
Instant read thermometer, genuinely necessary here
Baking dish 8 by 11 in (20 by 28 cm), offset spatula, thin knife
Prepared ahead
Fontina cubed and soaking in milk, refrigerated, up to 24 hours
Stewed leeks, cooled and sealed, refrigerated up to 2 days
Bechamel base, film on the surface, refrigerated up to 2 days
Pasta sheets blanched and layered between damp cloths, same day
Breadcrumbs and hazelnuts toasted together, airtight up to 3 days
Service setup
Fonduta combined with the bechamel 30 minutes before assembly at most
Assembled dish at room temperature, never refrigerated before baking
Oven fully preheated and the foil cut to size in advance
Plates warming to around 130°F (55°C), not hotter
Timer set for the 20 minute rest and respected
Chef Tips
Buy Fontina with the consortium stamp on the rind, a stylised outline of the Matterhorn, and refuse the imitations sold as fontal. They are pasteurised factory cheeses and they melt flat and rubbery. A young Toma di Gressoney behaves far better than a fake fontina will.
Keep any leek liquid left in the pan when you uncover it and use it in place of stock the next time you make a risotto. It is intensely sweet, it costs nothing, and pouring it away is the sort of waste that would appal anyone in Cuneo.
Cut the pasta sheets to fit the dish exactly rather than overlapping them. Overlaps create double thickness bands that stay firm while everything around them softens, and they are the commonest reason a home lasagne cuts badly.
If the sauce splits, take it off the heat, add 2 tablespoons of cold milk and whisk hard from the centre outwards. The cold liquid drops the temperature below the point where the casein is contracting and the whisking re emulsifies the fat.
Common Mistakes
Taking the fonduta above 175°F (80°C). This is the failure that ruins the dish and it happens in seconds: glossy to grainy, oil beading on the surface, protein contracting into a lump. Use a bowl over barely trembling water and check the temperature rather than trusting your eyes.
Skipping the milk soak. Dry Fontina melts into strings and gentle stirring will not change that. Four hours is the practical minimum. If you have forgotten, give the cubes 90 minutes in warm milk, which helps a little.
Adding the egg yolks over the heat. Yolks set at around 149°F (65°C) and scramble into visible threads if they meet the cheese while it is still over steam. Lift the bowl off, count to sixty, then beat them in one at a time.
Layering wet leeks. Leeks softened rather than reduced carry most of a cup of water into the dish. It comes out in the oven, collects under the bottom sheet and the lasagne slides apart on the spatula.
Boiling the pasta sheets through. Forty five seconds is the whole blanch. Sheets cooked to the point you would eat them have no structure left, and after 45 minutes in a hot oven they disintegrate between the layers.
Cutting it straight out of the oven. Every layer is mobile at 190°F (88°C) and the slice collapses. Twenty minutes of rest costs nothing and the lasagne is still properly hot at the end of it.
Wine Pairing
Valle d'Aosta Petite Arvine: The bottle from the same valley as the cheese and the most complete answer here. Grown on the terraces above Aymavilles, it has a sharp grapefruit and white flower attack with a saline finish that cuts the butterfat of the fonduta without stripping sweetness out of the leeks.
Valle d'Aosta Prié Blanc: Grown at Morgex and La Salle on ungrafted vines above 3,000 feet, and it tastes of that altitude: very high acidity, low alcohol, alpine herb and green apple. Against a rich cheese lasagne it resets the palate between forkfuls, and its herbal bitterness echoes the thyme.
Erbaluce di Caluso DOCG: From the moraine hills of northern Piedmont, on the same glacial ground an hour south. Erbaluce is austere and firmly acidic with a bitter almond close, and that bitterness lands against the aged Parmigiano and the toasted hazelnut rather than against the cream.
Valle d'Aosta Donnas DOC: Nebbiolo grown at the mouth of the valley, lighter and more angular than its Langhe cousins, with rose, tar and a fine dusty tannin. Served at 59°F (15°C) the tannin scrubs the fat and the acidity handles the bechamel, with no oak to fight the leeks.
Alto Adige DOC Pinot Nero: A mountain Pinot Nero from around Mazzon, pale and cool, with tannin so fine it barely registers. It is the safest red for a dish with no meat in it, bringing brightness and a faint earthy note that flatters the stewed leek.
Storage & Reheating
A baked lasagne keeps better than almost any other pasta dish, because the sauce is already set around the sheets. Cool it to room temperature within two hours, cover tightly and refrigerate up to 3 days. Individual portions store better than the whole dish.
To reheat, take the portion out 30 minutes ahead so it is not fridge cold at the centre, set it in a small dish with 1 tablespoon (15 ml) of milk spooned over, cover with foil and warm at 325°F (160°C) for 20 to 25 minutes. Uncover for the last 3 minutes. Never microwave on full power: it drives the fat out of the Fontina.
Assembled and unbaked, the dish freezes for up to 2 months in film and foil. Bake from frozen, covered, at 325°F (160°C) for 55 minutes, then uncovered at 350°F (175°C) for 20 more with the crumble added then. Do not freeze it after baking: the texture turns floury.
Nutrition
Per serving, based on 6 portions:
Calories: 640 kcal
Total Fat: 38 g
Saturated Fat: 21 g
Trans Fat: 0.8 g
Unsaturated Fat: 15 g
Cholesterol: 215 mg
Sodium: 780 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 46 g
Fiber: 3 g
Total Sugars: 7 g
Added Sugars: 0 g
Protein: 28 g
Lactose: 3.5 g
Principal micronutrients: calcium, phosphorus, vitamin A, vitamin B12, riboflavin, selenium, zinc
These are estimates. The largest variables are the Fontina, whose fat content shifts with the season and the age of the wheel, and the blanching water, which carries away a share of the salt.
Comments