In November 2004, my husband and I took our two children to Italy for the first time. For a variety of reasons we ended up in Umbria. I was working on my first cookbook, about Italian soups and stews, and Umbria, with its lush hills, chilly mists, and earthy country food, seemed like a good place to conduct research.
Nearly every meal began with platters of house-made or local salumi (cured meats and sausages) and cheeses. For someone who was researching soups and stews, I consumed an inordinate amount of tangy wild boar sausages and sheep’s milk cheese.
This ritual of setting out local salumi and cheeses occurs daily all over Italy, from Alto Adige to Sicily. There are countless variations on sausages, both fresh and dried, from the massive yet delicately flavored pistachio-studded mortadella from Emilia-Romagna to the ultra-spicy, spreadable ’nduja sausage from Calabria. Cheeses range from milky burrata and fluffy ricotta to crumbly extra-aged Parmigiano. These products, to me, offer the truest expression of Italian regional cuisine, of the land and what grows on it, of local flavors and preserving traditions.
This chapter is not intended to turn you into a master cheese maker or salumiere, but rather to offer a window—a peek—into the centuries-old Italian art of meat and milk preservation, and to introduce you to some simple techniques that will give you a better understanding of, and appreciation for, these essential foods of the Italian table.
There is nothing quite like an Italian cheese-making room in the morning, when the process of turning fresh milk into mozzarella and ricotta or other fresh cheese is in full swing. The air is thick with the warm aroma of curds, sweet and a little sour, with a bit of barnyard mixed in. It is one of the most comforting scents I know. The tile floor is splashed with puddles of whey, and the cheese maker (or cheese makers), suited up in white, are neatly cutting curd, or pressing it into baskets, or stretching it into balls or braids at a steady clip.
Cheese in Italy, both fresh and aged, is not something to put out when guests come calling; it is an essential part of the daily diet: ricotta on bread in the morning, Parmigiano grated onto pasta at lunch, a selection of cheeses served with salad as a light secondo (second course) in summer.
Most Italians don’t make their own cheese; just about everyone lives within walking distance of (or, at most, a short bike ride or drive from) a cheese shop or cheese-making operation of some sort. The countryside from Alto Adige to Sicily is dotted with caseifici—dairy farms that produce a spectrum of cheeses made with milk from cows, buffalos, sheep, or goats. With few exceptions, every small town and mountain village has at least one shop that brings in fresh cheese every day, and there is always at least one cheesemonger’s truck at the local farmers’ market. Good cheese is everywhere.
But if most Italians don’t make cheese at home, why should you? For one thing, it’s fun. It is also rewarding. I love ogling the little rounds of just-made primo latte (page 208), neatly imprinted with the pattern of the draining basket. Put a round of that out next time you entertain and I guarantee you will earn some wows. Presiding over the transformation of milk into cheese, even a simple fresh cheese like ricotta, will give you a better understanding of the cheese-making process in general, and a better appreciation of this culinary art that predates the Romans. You will become more curious and therefore more knowledgeable about cheese, about selecting it, tasting it, and enjoying it.
The recipes that follow are all fairly simple and produce fresh, unaged cheeses. Read the following section before you get started; it will help to make your cheese-making endeavors successful from the get-go.
Good cheese comes from good milk. Professional cheese makers start with the raw product; that is, milk that has not been pasteurized—heated to kill bacteria—or homogenized—treated to keep the cream from separating. Raw milk can be tough to source for the home cook, and it is not always legal, depending on state dairy laws. (Federal law bans the interstate sale or distribution of raw milk.)
Most supermarket milk has been ultra-pasteurized, meaning it has been heated briefly to 280°F, a process that kills nearly all the bacteria. While this makes it safe for drinking, it also alters the flavor of the milk and impedes its ability to transform into cheese. Most supermarket milk is also homogenized. This process of breaking down the fat globules so that they don’t separate into cream interferes with milk’s ability to separate into curds and whey, the first step in making cheese.
What’s the alternative? I rely on whole pasteurized, non-homogenized milk from several local dairies that I buy at farmers’ markets and at well-stocked grocery stores. This milk is often, but not always, sold in glass half-gallon bottles and has a telltale cap of thick cream milk at the top, which is why it is sometimes called “creamline” milk. It has been pasteurized, meaning it has been heated either to 145°F for 30 minutes or to 161°F for 15 seconds (high-temperature short-time pasteurization). Pasteurization, more gentle than ultra-pasteurization, kills harmful bacteria and increases the milk’s shelf life without affecting its flavor or its ability to coagulate. You should be able to find good local milk without too much trouble; the DIY food movement, along with the proliferation of farmers’ markets over the past few decades, has created a demand for it and made it more accessible.
To turn that milk into cheese, you need to introduce a coagulant, an ingredient that will transform it by forming curds. In the simplest cheeses, this is done by slowly heating the milk and then adding acid: typically lemon juice, vinegar, buttermilk, or calcium chloride. Any of those will work in making ricotta at home (page 203), but I use buttermilk because to me it tastes closest to the ricotta I buy in Italy.
Another coagulant is animal rennet, derived from enzymes found in the stomach lining of calves and other animals. It has been an essential ingredient in cheese making for thousands of years, and is commonly used to create a firmer, more solid curd. Commercial rennet is available in liquid or tablet form; I prefer liquid, as it is easier to measure and incorporate into milk.
Starter cultures and secondary cultures—molds and bacteria—have more specific roles in cheese making. Different strains contribute different characteristics, such as the blue veining and pungent flavor in Gorgonzola and other blue cheeses; or the bloomy white rind and creamy texture of, say, robiola. I mention these cultures only in passing, as they are integral to the craft of more advanced cheese making. For the recipes in this chapter, rennet is the most exotic ingredient you will need.
Salt is used to flavor Primo Latte (page 208). You can buy special cheese salt, which dissolves quickly, but I find that fine sea salt works well.
Here is a list of equipment needed to make the cheeses in this chapter. With one or two exceptions, you probably already have most of it in your kitchen.