This is hand-made cheese...
In the tiny north Tuscan village of Vitiana, Marzia makes cheese.
Our local food guide Heather from Sapori e Saperi took us to see how she does it.
...scooped from the bottom of the vat and slopped into moulds.
Then it's pressed into shape as the whey runs out through the holes.
The coins leave an impression to help identify the cheese later.
It's stored for months at 4 degrees...
...and so we get pecorino.
Perfect!
For information on gastronomic tours to visit Tuscan food producers, see www.sapori-e-saperi.com.
The writer was a guest of the management, but all cheese was paid for and personally eaten.
It looks so perfect, Richard, but I bet it’s not as easy as it looks. Is it sheeps’ milk cheese? The finished cheese looks fabulous.
Marzia makes cheese from cow, goat and sheep’s milk. The finished cut one is cow’s milk.
I love the pecorino in our area. I’ll have to check out this place.
We loved it there, BdL, though it’s a tiny village and the cheese shop is not well signposted. Ask directions first (or get Heather to take you there!)
I will contact Heather when I return to BdL in October. Is anything in Italy well signposted????
In fact, Richard, the finished cut cheese was mature pecorino, about a year old, and it was one of the best I’ve tasted of Marzia’s. She admitted, they don’t all come out that good (but pretty near!). In the photo of the moulds, the large ones are cow’s milk cheeses and the smaller one’s are goat’s milk. They’re the ones with the two old Lire coins in them to identify them as goat. Marzia combines the whey left from making both the cow and goat cheeses to make ricotta.
Thanks Heather.
We’ve brought some of Marzia’s pecorino back to Amsterdam to compare to the local edam, gouda and leiden. It measures up so well there’s not much of it left!
That’s quite a compliment, Richard. Although you’d never know it from the industrial edam and gouda that arrived in foreign supermarkets, the aged ones you get in Holland take a lot of beating!