Maltagliati al Mascarpone
Irregular diamond scraps of pasta in a velvety mascarpone-and-egg sauce. A Lombard dish from the Po Valley, built from nothing wasted: five minutes, five ingredients, and a sauce that coats like nothing else.
Maltagliati means badly cut, the irregular scraps left over when tagliatelle and the other egg pastas were made, never wasted, always eaten. The mascarpone version comes from the Po Valley around Lodi, where the rich cream cheese is a native product. It is the fastest of the Northern pasta sauces.
Only a few ingredients
Mascarpone
The base of the sauce, rich, cool, and ready to coat.
the starEgg yolk
The yolks give the sauce its body and its gloss.
Grana Padano
Grated in and scattered over the top. Grana, not Parmigiano, is the Lombard habit.
Nutmeg
Freshly grated, the warm note that lifts the creaminess.
Black Pepper
Freshly ground, generously.
Pasta Water
A splash, if needed, so the sauce coats rather than clumps.
Off the heat. The pasta does the cooking.
The mascarpone-and-egg sauce is never put on the stove. The yolks and mascarpone are beaten together in a bowl and stirred into the just-drained pasta, whose own heat sets the eggs. On the heat the eggs scramble and the sauce breaks. It is the same rule as carbonara: the residual heat of the pasta is the only fire this sauce should see.
Maltagliati
Ragged diamonds, cut by hand from a sheet of pasta.
Tagliatelle
The fresh egg pasta the scraps are cut from.
Ready to cook?
These sources we trust. Each one makes it correctly.
Other sauces from the same region
Paccheri alla Vittorio
Paccheri in a silky tomato-butter sauce, made famous by the three-Michelin-star Da Vittorio in Bergamo. The tomatoes are cooked, blended, and sieved to velvet, then mounted with cold butter and Parmigiano.
Pizzoccheri
The mountain dish of Valtellina. Buckwheat ribbons, potatoes, and savoy cabbage boiled in one pot, layered with Casera cheese, and drowned in hot garlic butter. Gooey, nutty, and built for a cold valley evening.
Scarpinocc di Parre
A meatless stuffed pasta from Parre, in the Val Seriana above Bergamo, shaped like the cloth shoes the village shepherds wore. A spiced cheese-and-breadcrumb filling, dressed the only way it should be: butter and sage.