Spring Primosale Cheese

Primosale cheese on a bed of pea pod purée with leek “noodles”, black garlic crumble, crispy leek roots and strawberries is a “sustainable” recipe created by Chef Raffaele Mancini, an instructor at the Cucina Piazza dei Mestieri school in Milan. We pair it with an Etna Bianco Alta Mora 2020 Cusumano.

This dish is enhanced by local ingredients and their byproducts. All the ingredients are strictly local and the peas and leeks are used in their entirety: the roots, the white sections, green sections and the pods.

This recipe was created for the A Lesson in Sustainability Project, which is taught in Italy’s leading amateur and professional cooking schools and is aimed at contributing to spreading an eco-sustainable mentality in the kitchen. It respects the seasonal life of the ingredients, reduces food waste by utilizing their less edible components and the ingredients are also selected based on how sustainable they are in regard to packaging and supply chain. This project has the support of many ambassadors, including Roberto Mancini.

Ingredients for 4 people:

400g primosale (fresh, lightly salted) cheese, 8 small leeks, 10-11 pods of peas, 8 black garlic cloves, 2 white garlic cloves, breadcrumbs as needed, 00 flour as needed, 12 strawberries, Garda PDO olive oil from the Brescia shore, fine salt, coarse salt and black pepper.

Directions:

Ingredient preparation:

Primosale: crush the cheese gently with a fork into chunks.

Leeks: wash the leeks and cut and separate the roots, the green parts and the white parts. Slice the white parts lengthwise into noodle-size stripes.

Peas: break open the pods, wash the peas and the pods and keep the pods and peas to the side.

Garlic: peel the cloves.

Strawberries: wash and cut into pieces.

Preparation:

Boil the pea pods and the green parts of the leeks until they become soft. Add half of the peas and continue to cook for 2 minutes. Blend the pods and leeks with some of the cooking water and a trickle of olive oil to obtain a moderately dense purée. Pass the sauce through a sieve.

Prepare the crumble by toasting breadcrumbs in a pan.

Blend the garlic cloves with a little lukewarm water to obtain a fairly thick paste, salt and pepper to taste and mix the garlic paste into the crumble.

Sauté the leek “noodles” with the white garlic until they become soft.

Flour and fry the leek roots in a little oil.

Presentation:

Spread some of the vegetable purée on a plate and sprinkle the crushed cheese on top. Cover the cheese and sauce with the garlic crumble and the crispy leek roots.

Place some leek “noodles”, wrapped like a nest, on top of the primosale cheese together with the strawberry pieces. Garnish with the remaining uncooked peas, adjust the sale and pepper and trickle over some oil.