Polenta concia from the Aosta Valley: maize flour cooked for an hour in the pot, stringy fontina and nut-brown butter poured on top. The recipe for 4 people.
Introduction
Polenta concia is the polenta of the Aosta Valley, and its name says it all: «concia» means dressed, enriched. In the last few minutes, cubes of fontina, the valley's cheese, are added to the yellow polenta, slowly cooked in the pot, and they melt and make it stringy; then, on the plate, butter browned to a hazelnut colour is poured over the top. There is nothing else: no meat, no sauce. It is a mountain dish, born to warm and to fill, and in the valley it is eaten on its own, as a meal in itself, on winter evenings.
The method is simple and above all asks for patience. The maize flour is sprinkled into boiling salted water and cooks for a good hour, stirred often with a wooden spoon, until it comes away from the sides of the pan. At that point the fontina goes in, melting in a few minutes, and finally the nut-brown butter. The real work takes a quarter of an hour; the rest is the polenta's own time, which cannot be shortened.
In the glass we pour the Amarone della Valpolicella D.O.C.G. by Comaroto, a red with concentrated fruit that holds its own against the fontina and the nut-brown butter. For everyday polenta there is the Monferrato DOC Nebbiolo Superiore BIO by Tenuta Vallone, the same grape that is drunk in the lower valley. On the side, a small dish of Giardiniera by SoloTreviso.
The Story of Polenta Concia
Maize reached the Aosta Valley late, between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, from the Piedmont plain, and in the higher side valleys, where it would not grow, it arrived as flour carried on muleback. Before then mountain polenta was made with buckwheat, barley and rye, and for a long time families mixed the flours. What was never lacking was milk: in the summer months the herds went up to the alpine pastures, and the milk became butter and fontina, a rich, soft cheese that kept until winter. Polenta concia was born from the meeting of these two things, the bought flour and the home-made cheese.
For centuries it was a dish for feast days more than for every day: plain polenta was eaten with milk or little else, while the «concia» version, with cheese and butter, was kept for Sundays and special occasions. Each side valley had its own way. In some homes the polenta was poured onto the plate in layers, alternating with thin slices of fontina and covered with melted butter; in others the fontina was melted straight into the pot. The fontina was often joined by toma, the leaner cheese from the same dairy. Today polenta concia is the best-known Aosta Valley dish outside the valley, and the fontina that makes it stringy has been a DOP since 1996.
Ingredients
For the polenta
- coarse-ground maize flour (bramata)400 g
- water1,6 l
- coarse saltto taste
For the dressing
- fontina DOP300 g
- butter100 g
- black pepperto taste
Nutritional Values per Serving
Values calculated from the recipe's ingredients using the CREA food composition tables, and from the labels of our products where available. They are an estimate per serving, not a laboratory analysis.
Equipment Needed
- Copper polenta pot or heavy-based pan
- Whisk
- Long-handled wooden spoon
- Small pan for the butter
- Knife and chopping board
Tip: The right pan is the copper polenta pot, or failing that a heavy-based cast-iron or steel pan: polenta cooks for an hour and tends to stick, and a thin base burns it in one spot before the rest is cooked. Choose a long wooden spoon, because boiling polenta spits and scalds.
How to Make Polenta Concia — Aosta Valley Recipe
The flour
Bring the water to the boil in the pot and salt it with a handful of coarse salt. Sprinkle in the maize flour a little at a time, whisking without stopping so that no lumps form. When all the flour is in and the mixture starts to swell, turn the heat down to the minimum.
Chef's tip: Let the flour fall from a hand held high, in a thin stream: if it all drops in at once, lumps form straight away and will not dissolve afterwards.
The cooking
Let the polenta cook over low heat for about an hour, stirring it often with the wooden spoon, from the bottom upwards, so that it does not stick. If it thickens too soon, add a small ladleful of boiling water. It is ready when it is thick and glossy and comes away from the sides of the pan by itself.
Chef's tip: For polenta concia it is best to keep it a little softer than polenta meant for slicing: the fontina thickens it further, and a polenta that is already firm becomes heavy.
The fontina
While the polenta cooks, remove the rind from the fontina and cut it into one-centimetre cubes. When the polenta is cooked, turn off the heat and add the fontina in two or three batches, stirring vigorously until it has all melted and the polenta turns smooth and stringy.
Chef's tip: The fontina goes in with the heat off: over a high flame the cheese separates, loses its fat and turns rubbery instead of stringy.
The nut-brown butter
In a small pan, melt the butter over medium heat and let it cook until it stops foaming, turns hazelnut-coloured and smells toasted. Share the polenta concia among warm plates, pour the hot nut-brown butter over the top and finish with a grind of black pepper. Bring it to the table at once.
Chef's tip: Butter goes from nut-brown to burnt in a few seconds: once it has taken on colour, take it off the heat, because it keeps cooking in the hot pan.
Wine to Pair with Polenta Concia
Polenta concia looks like an easy dish to pair, and is instead one of the most demanding in mountain cooking. On the plate there is no meat, no sauce, nothing acidic: there is the sweetness of the maize flour, the fontina that melts and stretches, and over everything the butter browned to a hazelnut colour, which brings a toasted aroma and an amount of fat that few other Italian dishes know. So the wine's problem is not flavour, it is weight. A light, thin red disappears here at the first mouthful, buried under the cheese; a fresh white cleanses the mouth but has nothing to say to the nut-brown butter. Two things are needed together: a body and an intensity of fruit that hold their own against the fontina, and a backbone, of acidity or of fine tannin, that lifts the fat off the palate with every sip. Then there is help from the dish itself: the toasted notes of the butter and the milky, hazelnut notes of aged fontina marry well with reds aged in wood, which share the same family of aromas.
The Red We Recommend
Amarone della Valpolicella D.O.C.G. — Comaroto — The **Amarone della Valpolicella D.O.C.G. by Comaroto** is the choice for festive polenta concia, the kind served as a meal in itself on a winter evening. It comes from the highest hills of Illasi, in the eastern Valpolicella, from forty- to sixty-year-old vines of Corvina, Corvinone, Rondinella, Oseleta and Croatina, with a drying period of about three months, shorter than usual, chosen by the winery to keep the freshness of the grapes. From there comes what this dish needs: a concentrated fruit of sour cherry and blueberry that does not let itself be buried by the fontina, and a structure that carries the butter without growing heavy. Twenty-four months in new barriques and another twenty-four in bottle give it hints of chocolate, tobacco and truffle that answer the toasted note of the nut-brown butter, and a tannin already polished that does not turn rough on the melted cheese. The limits must be stated in full. The first is the alcohol: 16,5% vol beside such a rich, hot dish is a lot, and the bottle should be poured into small glasses and drunk slowly, with the polenta in measured portions. The second is that it is not the valley's wine: in the Aosta Valley this dish is drunk with the local reds, which are leaner, and Amarone is a choice of intensity, not of tradition. At 136 € it is a wine for an occasion: open it an hour ahead and serve it at 18-20 °C, no warmer, because above twenty degrees the alcohol comes out into the open and adds to the butter instead of cleansing it.
Want to know more about the grape? our guide to Amarone della Valpolicella
The Grape of the Lower Valley
Monferrato DOC Nebbiolo Superiore BIO — Tenuta Vallone — In the lower Aosta Valley, at Donnas and Arnad, the local red is **Nebbiolo**, the same grape that then runs down towards Piedmont: that is why the **Monferrato DOC Nebbiolo Superiore BIO by Tenuta Vallone** is the pairing closest to what is drunk in the valley alongside polenta concia. It is a pure Nebbiolo from organic farming, grown at Conzano, in the Gran Monferrato, on marl and limestone soils, and aged first in steel and then in barriques and tonneaux. Here it works the opposite way to the Amarone: it does not match the dish in power, it lightens it. At 13,5% vol, with a fine tannin and lively freshness, it lifts the butter and the fontina off the palate with every sip, and its aromas of berries and roses with a spicy edge give breathing room to a dish that is otherwise all sweetness and fat. It is the right bottle for everyday polenta concia, or when the same meal also includes cured meats and cheeses. The limit mirrors the one above: if the polenta is very rich, with plenty of fontina and generous butter, the Nebbiolo holds up but its finish shortens, and the cheese has the last word. Serve it at 16-18 °C.
Want to know more about the grape? our guide to Nebbiolo
Craft Beer as an Alternative
Reckless Bock Beer — Norah's Farm — A malt beer is a natural pairing for polenta concia, because maize and toasted barley speak the same language. The **Reckless Bock by Norah's Farm** is a bottom-fermented Dunkel Bock, deep copper, with a very present malt and barely a hint of hops: its notes of caramel and dried fruit rhyme with the nut-brown butter, cooked, sweet and toasted, and they go along with the sweetness of the polenta instead of contrasting it. It also has an advantage that neither of the two wines has: carbonation, which mechanically sweeps away the film of fontina and butter left in the mouth, and halfway through the plate you notice it. Two limits. The first is that 7% vol is not a light beer, and with a dish already this substantial it should be drunk in moderation. The second is that the dark malt adds sweetness to a dish that already has plenty: with a young, mild fontina the whole risks becoming cloying, while with a more aged fontina and a pinch of pepper it works better. Serve it at 8-10 °C: too cold, it loses the caramel and only the bitterness is left.
Want to explore the style? amber and dark beers
Serve It With
Polenta concia is sweet, rich and hot, and beside it wants something sharp and crunchy to lighten it. The Giardiniera by SoloTreviso does exactly that: cauliflower, courgettes, onions, peppers and carrots, cooked one by one so that they stay crunchy and preserved in a sweet-and-sour wine vinegar liquid. Served in a small dish beside the polenta, the acidity of the vinegar cleans the mouth of fontina and butter, and the crunch of the vegetables contrasts with the soft polenta.
In the valley polenta concia is often eaten on its own, but those who want a fuller meal can bring a board of mountain cured meats to the table, or a bowl of green salad dressed with oil and vinegar, which rounds off a dish like this well at the end of the meal.
Variations
- In layers: this is the oldest way. Pour a layer of soft polenta into the serving dish, cover it with thin slices of fontina, then another layer of polenta and another of cheese, and finish with the nut-brown butter. The fontina melts in the heat of the polenta, and every spoonful picks up a little of it.
- With milk: for a softer, sweeter polenta, cook the flour in half water and half whole milk. It needs stirring even more often, because milk sticks to the bottom sooner than water.
- With toma: in many Aosta Valley homes half the fontina is replaced with toma, a leaner, more flavourful dairy cheese. The polenta is a little less stringy and has a bolder taste.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between polenta concia and polenta taragna?
Polenta concia comes from the Aosta Valley and is made with maize flour, dressed with fontina and nut-brown butter. Polenta taragna comes from the Valtellina and is made with a mix of buckwheat and maize flour, dressed with Valtellina Casera cheese and butter: it has a darker colour and a more rustic taste.
Can you use a cheese other than fontina?
Fontina DOP is the recipe's cheese, because it is rich, soft and melts without separating. If you cannot find it, you can use toma or a semi-hard alpine cheese that stretches well. A cheese that is too aged or too lean, on the other hand, will not stretch and makes the polenta grainy.
Can you use instant maize flour?
Yes, and the polenta is ready in a few minutes instead of an hour. The result, however, is different: instant polenta is smoother and less flavourful, because the flour is already pre-cooked. For polenta concia, where the flour is almost the whole dish, the long cooking makes the difference.
Is polenta concia a first course or a meal in itself?
In the Aosta Valley it is eaten as a meal in itself, because with the cheese and the butter it is already a complete meal. Served in smaller portions it can open a dinner as a first course, or accompany a stew or braised meat.
Can it be made in advance?
It is best freshly made, while the fontina is still stringy. Leftovers keep in the fridge for a day: cut them into slices and heat them in a pan or in the oven until the cheese melts again, with a little butter on top.
