Crespelle alla Valdostana

The Aosta Valley is officially bilingual French-Italian and sits against the high Alps below Mont Blanc and the Great St Bernard pass, so French-Savoyard cooking runs deep here; the crêpe (crespella) is the local everyday pancake, called crêpe à la valdôtaine in French. Rather than the invention of one cook on one date, the dish is best understood as the marriage of that imported French crêpe technique with the valley's defining dairy. Fontina is a raw cow's-milk mountain cheese documented in the valley by the 15th century — Pantaleone da Confienza praised the cheeses of the region in his treatise on dairy foods printed in 1477 — and it carries DOP (protected designation) status granted in 1996. The valley's cured pork tradition is anchored by Jambon de Bosses, the prosciutto of Saint-Rhémy-en-Bosses high on the St Bernard road, likewise a DOP product. Folded together, ham and melting Fontina inside a crêpe under béchamel make a classic of Valdostan home and trattoria cooking; no single-inventor origin or first-made year should be claimed for it.

You break through a thin, just-crisp gratin top into a soft, pillowy crêpe; the Fontina inside has gone to molten threads that pull as you lift the fork. The cooked ham gives a gentle salt-and-smoke savour, the béchamel is silky and milky, and the browned cheese on top adds a faintly nutty, toasted edge. It is rich and comforting, warm all the way through, with the crêpe melting rather than chewing.

The crêpe batter is thin and rested before cooking: resting lets the flour starch fully hydrate and the gluten relax, so the pancakes cook tender and flexible rather than tough or rubbery. The béchamel is a roux sauce — flour starch is dispersed and cooked in butter, then milk is whisked in so the starch granules swell and gelatinise, thickening the milk into a smooth, stable sauce that coats the rolls and keeps them moist as the oven's dry heat works. Fontina is one of the best melting cheeses: young, high in moisture and low in acidity, its casein network loosens cleanly with heat so it flows into molten strands instead of tightening into rubber. On the surface, proteins and sugars in the cheese and béchamel brown by the Maillard reaction, while the gratin's top heat dries and sets a thin golden crust as the interior stays creamy.