In Italy, mozzarella is a table cheese as well as a cooking ingredient. It’s made from the milk of water buffalo. A slice of soft, delicate mozzarella sprinkled with a little salt and eaten on a piece of equally fresh bread is a real taste treat. Another simple presentation is Insalada Caprisi (salad in the style of Capri) which features sliced mozzarella and sliced tomatoes, dressed with a little olive oil and chopped basil. If you’re lucky enough to live near a real Italian dairy store featuring latticini fresci (fresh dairy products), you can buy your mozzarella within hours of its “birth.” Otherwise, consider making your own. That stuff in the shrink-wrapped plastic bears no resemblance to the genuine article!
Ricotta is another fresh cheese. The ancient Romans made and ate it. Its name comes from the Latin word “recocta” for re-cooked or twice-cooked, referring to its manufacturing method. Again, fresh whole-milk ricotta is a sweet and delicious food (it’s often used to make Italian desserts) while that part-skim stuff that sits in your grocer’s case for weeks is merely watery and sour.
Aged cheeses include the ones grated over pasta like parmesan (parmigiano reggiano) and romano (pecorino romano). Parmigiano Reggiano can be traced back to the Middle Ages. It was valued so highly that it was used as currency. These hard cheeses are made in gigantic wheels. Cutting (technically fracturing) them when they’re done takes years of experience, and a stethoscope-like instrument is used to make sure the cheese wheels are ready. While parmesan is made from cow’s milk, pecorino romano is made from the milk of sheep (pecora means sheep in Italian). Neither of these cheeses tastes anything like the sawdust-in-a-canister some American cheese companies sell for sprinkling over pasta.
Another Italian aged cheese is gorgonzola, Italy’s famous blue cheese. Just like Roquefort, this cheese gains its flavor and veining from mold. Here’s an unusual recipe I learned in Rome. While cooking about a half a pound of pasta, place a heat-proof bowl over the pasta pot. Into the bowl put six ounces of gorgonzola, two tablespoons of butter, and a garlic clove, slivered. As the pasta cooks, the cheese and butter melt and meld together with the garlic. After the pasta is done and drained, mix it into the bowl with the gorgonzola and butter. Simple and exquisite!
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