Italy's smallest region is tucked into the loftiest corner of the Alps with borders on France and Switzerland, neighbors who influence the cooking of the French-speaking population. Still, though Valle d'Aosta shares traditions with Piedmont (of which it was long a province), the foods of its Alpine valleys have rarefied character of their own.

       Pasta and olive oil are novelties in a robust cuisine based on cheese and meat, rye bread, potatoes, polenta, gnocchi, risotto and soups. Cows grazed on Alpine meadows provide fine butter and cheese called toma, Robiola and above all Fontina, which figures in many a dish, including fondua, made with milk as in Piedmont's fonduta.

       Valle d'Aosta Fromadzo is a firm cow's milk cheese (sometimes with a bit of ewe's milk) that has been made in the valley since the 15th century. Cheese is also used with polenta, risotto and in thick soups, whose ingredients range beyond the usual vegetables, meat, rice and potatoes to include mushrooms, chestnuts and almonds.

       Meat specialties of Valle d'Aosta are the beef stew called carbonade and breaded veal cutlets or costolette. Aostans savor the trout that abounds in mountain streams and game: partridge, grouse, hare, venison, as well as chamois and ibex (for which hunting is limited). Noted pork products are prosciutto called Jambon de Bosses, which rates a DOP, as does the Lard (salt pork) from the town of Arnad. Spicy blood sausages called boudins and salame are preserved in pork fat. Mocetta is the rare prosciutto of chamois or ibex. A curiosity is tetouns, cow's udder salt cured with herbs, cooked, pressed and sliced fine like ham.

       The Alpine climate lends flavor to berries and fruit, especially apples and pears called martin sec that are cooked with red wine as dessert. The region is noted for fragrant mountain honey, almond biscuits called tegole and butter crisps known as torcetti.

REGIONAL SPECIALITIES:

CHEESES

• FONTINA • VALLE D'AOSTA FORMADZO •

Fresh & Cured Meats

• VALLE D'AOSTA JAMBON DE BOSSES •

• VALLE D'AOSTA LARD D'ARNARD •

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