I like sheep’s milk cheeses. This one, fiore sardo, comes from Sardegna. I ate it with Ak-Mak whole wheat crackers. Delicious. I am way too lazy to research the cheese *and* synthesize it into my own words, so include here an excerpt from Gourmet-Food.com and a very cool video on how it’s made. Thank you, web authors!

Fiore Sardo is a cheese of very ancient origins that predates the Roman conquest of Sardinia. Fiore Sardo is older than Pecorino Romano. Fiore Sardo enjoyed great popularity in the nineteenth century when it was the only cheese to be exported from the island. It was particularly sought after by merchants in Naples and Genoa where it was used in the preparation of pesto.

It is an uncooked hard cheese made from fresh whole sheep’s milk. The cheese ripened in moulds that will give the cheese its characteristic shape. After a brief period in brine, the moulds are lightly smoked and left to ripen in cool cellars in central Sardinia.

The rind varies from deep yellow to dark brown in colour and encases a paste that varies from white to straw-yellow. The sharpness of the flavor depends on the length of maturation.

It’s been a month and a half since I bought cheese! Scandalous!

I’m heading to Pittsburgh next week, and expecting a trip to Penn Mac, so the visit to the Wegman’s cheese counter was less exciting than usual. I saw the quadrello di bufala I liked so much, but went for a cheese I had never heard of: trugole. Here’s a description:

An Italian cheese originating from the mountainous region of Asiago where the altitude and lush meadows provide excellent pastures for the cows to develop their milk. Produced as a cow’s milk cheese, Trugole is formed into washed-rind wheels weighing from 1 to 6 pounds. The cheese is allowed to mature for 2 to 3 months developing a straw colored semi-firm paste that provides a mild fruity flavor. Trugole Cheese is an excellent cheese for snacking, for serving with crusted breads or for use in melting over various foods. (Text grabbed from here.)

The chunk I bought was produced by Agriform, the largest cheese producer in Veneto. Known mostly for grana padano (a semi-hard cheese similar to, yet younger than, parmigiano reggiano), Agriform (with its member dairies) has been producing, maturing and selling DOP (Denominazione d’Origine Protetta) cheeses since 1980.

I sliced it and ate it with rosemary bread. Its flavor is reminiscent of fontinella, a cheese my father used to call “stinky cheese”. Trugole isn’t stinky, or even very flavorful for that matter. While I’ve satisficed for now, I really can’t see any reason to buy this cheese again.

Every so often I get the chance to head over the Ben Franklin bridge and into New Jersey, where the gas is cheap and the stores are plenty. About 20 minutes from Philly, in Cherry Hill, resides Wegmans supermarket – a foodie’s bounty. Truly. If I ever abandon the urban life, I want to live near one of these. Mark my words.

Perimeter shoppers adore Wegmans for its variety of high quality foods. Walking through the fruits and vegetables inspires the urge to eat well. Mushroom risotto? or perhaps a tart with a lemon scented crust? Braised fennel for pasta, or shaved in a salad? How can I use that huge bunch of fresh mint?

For me, standing before the olive bar conjures visions of Mediterranean travels past – Ligurian hillsides and Andalusian highlands, Delphian valleys, stone-tiered terraces in Lebanon. In my twenties and early thirties, the men I loved were from families with olive groves. My lifelong friend Kim still jokes about that being the most frequent element of my dating “pattern”. Ha ha! One day I’d like to have an olive tree and a rosemary bush that don’t die in the winter … even if these exist in a greenhouse.

Picture grabbed from here.

Of Wegmans’ many treasures, I discover the most intriguing at the cheese counters, mostly because I’ve eaten so few of the varieties they carry. On my last visit, I discovered quadrello di bufala, a soft cheese from Lombardia. I ate it at room temperature on rosemary bread. It was the perfect meal.

Quadrello di bufala is produced in the provincia di Bergamo (near Milano) at a family-owned dairy that has dedicated itself over the past 3 years to making cheese with milk from water buffalo. According to Janet Fletcher, they’ve now got 25 varieties. Very interesting, indeed. She describes the cheese so beautifully, I hardly want to take a stab at it myself:

Take a moment to appreciate this cheese’s seductive aroma, a merging of cave and mushroom scents with the frank fermentation smell of cultured milk. On the tongue, it is supple, creamy and coating, with plentiful salt and a vigorous tang. In Quadrello I find everything I am looking for in cheese: a compelling fragrance, a pleasing texture, flavor balance and a long finish.
(Read more here.)

Each time I make the trip to Wegmans, I tell myself I can always go again in another few weeks. So far, I’ve made it there no more than 2-3 times per year. LOL. Last year at the Appetite for Awareness event, I begged the guys at the Wegmans table to consider opening up an outpost in the city. All I need is the perimeter, I said. They just laughed. The drive over the bridge is no big deal; it’s just conceptually far far away.

My longtime friend Jeff was in town this weekend, with a newly rekindled interest in cooking. We caught up Saturday afternoon for some fun; decided to head down to the Italian Market, where we found ourselves reminiscing about Pittsburgh’s far superior Strip District.

Of our many discoveries that afternoon, we learned that Claudio’s sells cheese curd, in 5 and 10 pound blocks, for $3.99/pound. Reminded of the cooking class we once took on how to make mozzarella at home, we bought a block and decided to eat insalata caprese for dinner rather than heading out to a restaurant.

Making mozzarella is super simple. All you need is a big bowl, cheese curd, almost-boiling salted water and the will to work quickly with hands that burn. My friend Kim asks, “Why would you want to make at home what you can easily buy at the store?” I don’t know.

All I do know is that it is fun to make. The pace, the texture, the promise of something delicious?  Here’s what you do, in case anyone out there in cyberspace wants to try.

Cut up a half pound or so of cheese curd into blocks:

Put them in a large mixing bowl. Cover with salted water and press gently with a wooden spoon until softened.

Drain, and cover again with the hot salted water. Working quickly, knead it into a soft ball, and drain again. It will look something like this:

Cover once more with the hot salted water and shape into a ball. Marvel at how simple that is, and toss it into a bowl of cold ice water. Eat immediately, or keep it in a bowl of salted water for a day or so.

You can shape it any way you want: in a braid, a disc, a square. I also like to flatten it out into a rectangular shape, add a thin layer of ‘filler’ on it (like basil, prosciutto, sun-dried tomato) and roll it up into a tight log. Slicing it gives you pinwheels of pleasure, and lots of admiration from your friends.

We sliced it with tomatoes and basil from my garden, and some EVOO from California. Nothing fancy. A perfect dinner with a great friend. What else could I want?

Image grabbed from http://www.forevercheese.com/pic.asp?iCat=4&iPic=256

Hot damn. I found a good one. A really good one. Thank you Carlino’s. I stopped by today dreaming of prosciutto I could wrap around the super ripe melon I bought this weekend, but made a few impulse buys while browsing: a bag of Macine, an issue of La Cucina Italiana, and a piece of the best ‘new’ cheese I’ve tried in months.

The sign in the case read “goat cheese from Sardegna”.  I chose the smallest piece I could find and tossed it into my basket. What risk is there in a $6 ($18.29/lb) piece of cheese? It’s a bargain considering it’s travelled across the world, for goodness sake*.

I lack the vocabulary to describe the sensations I experienced while eating some this evening. Meadows. Mountains. An odd buzzing/opening of my sinuses (seriously). WTH?

Janet Fletcher, a fabulous food writer for the San Fransisco Chronicle, describes her experience quite eloquently:

My first aromatic impression is herbal, the fragrance of dried mountain herbs like rosemary and thyme. Behind those aromas are some caramel notes that remind me of cajeta, the Mexican goat’s milk candy. I don’t find any of the animal scent that turns some people off of goat cheese.

On the tongue, the cheese delivers that perfect balance of salty and sweet that keeps me coming back. The finish is faintly lemony, the texture crumbly as the cheese dissolves.

Forever Cheese describes it:

A unique goat cheese from Sardegna and a rare find as there are few aged goat cheeses in Italy, Pantaleo is ivory in color with a pale rind. The cheese is aged a minimum of 100 days and it is full flavored, sweet with a clean, floral finish; it almost doesn’t taste like goat cheese.

Hmmm. One more reason to daydream about my next vacation. Sardegna is one of three Italian regions I’ve yet to visit. Have been enamored with the idea of travelling there after buying Bugialli’s Foods of Sicily and Sardegna years ago. I so wish I could sneak away and visit in September.  (Wanderlust is strong this month, fueled by my time in California.)

*I can’t imagine willfully choosing to adhere to ‘buy local’ dogma, though I wholeheartedly support sustainable agriculture. It exists worldwide; I bet the goats grazing on Sardinian mountaintops live happy lives.

Image grabbed from http://www.pennmac.com/items/3989

Caught up with an old friend this morning at Penn Mac ‘dahn’a Strip, and asked him to introduce me to an Italian version of Zamorano, a favored sheep’s milk cheese from Spain. He gave me pecorino toscano, a far less interesting choice now that I am at home eating it with a slice of ciabatta and some cerignola olives. Mild and a bit creamy, it’s got far less bite than the pecorino romano I bought while experimenting with carbonara a while back. Ate it with a bit of honey, but still derived no particular pleasure. Pazienza!

It turns out that eating pizza and french fries on the boardwalk is a summertime ritual. Who knew? Where I grew up, summertime water fun took place in our neighborhood swimming pools or in a nearby lake (Deep Creek, MD and the Yough) or river (Ohiopyle State Park), with no pizza in sight! In my almost 8 years of life in Philly, today was the first time I’d been “down the shore” in the summer season.

Taking the girls to the amusement park in Ocean City meant getting pizza from Mac & Manco, a local favorite. We scored a bench right in front of the place: 

Moments later, our pizza arrived – with dire warnings of aggressive seagull dives. 

Cheesey, gooey goodness: that’s what I say! First opened in 1956, by Anthony Mack and Vincent Manco, the business has since expanded its empire to Wildwood and Atlantic City boardwalks. Surely Vincent was Italian? Stuart says there’s always a line out the door. I can appreciate its lore … the shore, I’ve learned, is an experience, not a destination.

Jersey, however, is a foreign land whose codes I don’t get. Case in point #1:

Case #2: Loudspeaker announcements that feeding the seagulls is forbidden – invoking a “city ordinance” – mean nothing to tourists. When the beautiful creatures hover right above you – motionless, despite the wind – and call, who can resist tossing up a crust for them to catch? Not bird lovers, that’s for sure. Watched a bratty 10-year old tossing sand at the birds and fantasized the channelling of Alfred Hitchcock, just for a moment. 

Case #3: The $.75 toll booth on the AC Expressway has several EXACT CHANGE only lanes. I landed in one, caught short $.09 and terrorized by the aggressive honking and yelling from the traffic I was holding up while digging in my purse for more coins, I had no choice but to drive away. Certain “They” would photograph my license plate and slap me with a ridiculous fine, I confessed my sins and paid the toll in full at the next toll booth, again invoking again the wrath of the drivers behind me. Aggressive East Coast driving is no exaggeration. Seems, however, that whatever relaxation was sought ‘down the shore’ is short-lived. LOL.

Maybe one of these days I’ll actually start cooking again? Not microwave pasta, for sure. It seems the crest of my crazy workload is about to fall …

I ate the Italian flag for dinner tonight: chopped Campari tomatoes, sauteed baby spinach and mozzarella di bufala. It was funny to see it there on my placemat. The words came to my mind right as Carlo called!  Funny coincidence…or is it?

I love trying new foods. In the good old days of life in ‘da ‘Burgh, weekly trips ‘dahn ‘a ‘Strip ‘n ‘at meant chatting with Carol at Penn Mac and tasting her recommended cheeses. Great “discoveries” in those days: Spanish zamorrano, Italian raschera, St. Andre triple creme brie … 

Last week at Carlino’s I picked up a wedge of Alta Badia, a cheese from Italy’s Dolomiti, near the Austrian border. While enamoured with its story once I got home and Googled it, its taste fails to invoke even the slightest tinge of pleasure for me. Pazienza!

Photo grabbed from http://bolzano.blogattivo.com/Bolzano-b1/Alta-Badia-un-formaggio-si-presenta-b1-p59380.htm

But the picture is beautiful, isn’t it? Produced by a local cooperative of farmers in the Badia Valley, this cow’s milk cheese is aged for about six months and contains about 45% fat. Nothing like a triple creme brie, but that’s likely a good thing. 

Writing for the San Fransisco Chronicle, Janet Fletcher describes more about Alta Badia’s story:

This mountainous area, at the heart of the Dolomites, was under Austrian rule until World War I, and it is still multilingual and multicultural. German remains the dominant language and the dominant influence on the table, with Italian a distant second in the language department. In a handful of local villages, a few thousand people maintain the Ladin language, a derivative of Latin.

The dairy, in the town of Brunico, gathers milk daily from its members, most of whom have only two to five cows; the largest farm has a dozen. The milk is pasteurized, and the cheese-making proceeds according to a recipe similar to that used for Gruyere or Appenzeller, the alpine cheeses of neighboring Switzerland. After the fresh curds are packed into their molds, they are pressed to force out whey and produce a more compact texture in the finished cheese.

The unmolded young wheels are brined for two days to season them and establish the rind, then transferred to an aging room where they will spend at least six months.

So, there you have it. A little bit of effort often reveals interesting tidbits, even if I didn’t find the cheese all that tasty. Don’t know if I’ll actually eat the cheese, but imagining its production sated the wanderlust this evening. 

Am heading to Pittsburgh this weekend, and looking forward to hitting my favorite cheese shop.

Over the years I’ve been at the university, I’ve often ended up having lunch at Così restaurant, where my favorite menu item is the simplest: the tomato basil mozzarella sandwich. In my humble opinion, it’s best without the vinaigrette, baked or cold. 

Though the name of the place is an Italian adverb whose meaning depends on the grammatical construction it falls within, ranging from “like that” to “so” to “therefore”, I got to wondering today what that has to do with food. Garden path thoughts there. None at all. Just like this blog post! LOL.

Some quick research reveals that the original Così restaurant was based on a cafe in Paris and that its name actually comes from Mozart’s opera Così fan tutte, which was a favorite of the original owner. Interesting tidbit, especially given the opera’s relevance to my own college years (and many failed attempts to master Despina’s “Una donna  a quindici anni”).  What a pleasure to now hear Cecilia Bartoli’s version on You Tube (singing starts at 4 minutes): 

Anyway, while standing in the sun at a traffic light this afternoon and watching the sparrows gather twigs for new nests, I found myself longing for happier times. Think basil plant in my garden … think long bike rides … think outdoor yoga … think skirts and sandals … think Capogiro coming to my side of town … whatever it takes to get  me to the other side of this darkness.