I just counted the number of cheeses in our fridge, six. Contrary to the name of this blog...lots of cheese for us! So, what cheeses do we have?Treccione affumicato : treccione comes from the word treccia which means plait or braid, and affumicatio means smoked. So this is a smoked braid of...further investigation reveals that the cheese is called scamorza which is an Italian cows milk cheese (Italian cows mind you!). This cheese can be substituted for mozzarella; being a fan of smoked cheeses I quite liked this one and would like to try it on pizza.
Brie: across the border now to France...Marito can't resist a good Brie. This cheese is named after a town in France and doesn't necessary have to be made from French cow's milk.
 How does one milk a sheep? | Pecorino Pepato Frecso: a fresh sheep's cheese with peppercorns. I wasn't a huge fan of this cheese but I would like to try the aged versions. We bought these cheeses to eat with a beautiful home made foccacia. Since being in Italy we've started making our own pizza dough, this is so very tasty and I recommend the extra effort (Jamie Oliver's dough recipe is pretty good). Foccacia is pretty much made the same way as pizza dough, but isn't rolled flat for cooking. |
Ricotta: apparently not technically cheese, rather a by-product of cheese making, not bad for a by-product. We got this cheese to make tuna balls but have previously made gnocchi with ricotta, a fast alternative to potato gnocchi. As well as the usual fresh form, ricotta is available baked, salted and smoked, I'm intrigued to try these.
Mascarpone: also not technically a cheese, but a triple cream...need I say more? Yes, use it, it's good. For a few weeks Marito was under the impression that marscarpone was a healthier alternative to cream...ha!Parmegiano regina forme: the good old parmo, always present in our kitchen (except when nasty cheese ladies have their way). We normally buy about 1/48 of a wheel, I am tempted to buy an entire wheel one day, but probably wouldn't be able to carry it home.
That's quite a few borsas worth of cheese !
ReplyDeleteBut no round up of Italian cheese would be complete without mentioning mozzarella di bufala which is a tasty alternative to plain old mozzarella, made with the milk of water buffaloes. Together with some courgette it makes a classic pizza topping.
Well keep up the good work. I've been living in Trieste for more than four years and I've learnt a few things from the episodes described in your blog.
Thanks Sam, I think my next cheese adventure will be called "Cheeses that are tasty on pizza".
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