Sciatt

Sciatt belong to the buckwheat-based peasant cooking of the Valtellina, the Alpine valley of the upper Adda in Sondrio province. Buckwheat — grano saraceno, a pseudocereal rather than a true grain — first appears in the valley around the middle of the 16th century and became a staple of the local poor, the same flour that defines pizzoccheri and polenta taragna. The fritters are said to descend from chisciöi, the older flat buckwheat-and-cheese fritters of the Tirano area, and are often tied to villages such as Ponte in Valtellina before spreading across the whole valley; precise dates are not securely documented. The melting cheese is Valtellina Casera, a semi-fat cow's-milk cheese aged from about 70 days, which together with Bitto is one of the two Valtellina cheeses to hold Protected Designation of Origin (DOP), granted in 1996. The name is the dialect word for «toad», a reference to the squat, dark, irregular shape rather than any ingredient.

Each one is a craggy, dark-brown nugget the size of a walnut, the buckwheat shell shattering crisp under the teeth with a faint nutty, earthy bitterness. Inside, the Casera has gone fully molten — a hot, stretchy, mildly tangy pull of cheese that strings when you break one open. The batter carries a whisper of beer and grappa, and the whole thing is eaten scalding, the heat cut by the cold, bitter chicory and its sharp oil-and-vinegar dressing underneath. The pleasure is the contrast: crunch against ooze, earthy buckwheat against milky cheese, hot fritter against cold leaves.

Buckwheat is gluten-free, so a batter made from it alone cannot build the elastic network that normally traps water and forms a coherent crust; the small amount of white 00 flour supplies just enough gluten to bind the batter so it clings to the cheese and sets into a shell rather than dissolving into the oil. The traditional splash of grappa helps too — alcohol weakens gluten development and evaporates faster than water, both of which push the crust toward crisp rather than chewy, while the carbon dioxide from the beer lightens it. The cheese must be young Casera: aged only around 70 days it still melts cleanly to a stretchy mass, whereas a longer-aged, fattier cheese would weep oil and split inside the fritter. Fry in deep oil at about 175-180°C: hot enough that the shell crisps and browns before the cheese inside has time to scorch or burst out, but not so hot that the outside burns before the centre turns molten. Too cool and the batter drinks oil and goes greasy; too hot and the shell colours while the core is still solid.