Cheese

Cheese, thats all. The most beautiful cheese. My favorite thing in the Entire World. Well, all I can say is that I am biased towards Parmigiano Reggiano, so please excuse if I rant about it.

The day started with the aroma that came from the kitchen. The stench. The. Wonderful. Stench. The aroma of beautiful aged cheese that comes from Italy, Going from the Soft to the Hard. We spent the morning tasting and labeling cheese that came from the many regions of Italy, my favorite of course coming from the area of Italy to the north, Emilia Romagna.

While most people love mozzarella and ricotta, you give me a wheel of Parmigiano Reggiano, I promise you it will not see the light of the next day, as it will be in my stomach. I promise you that.

All things parm aside, the day went smooth, we were tasked with making Foccacia con Formaggio, which was a thin pastry dough filled with soft cows cheese, and we made about 5 pounds of hand rolled orecchiette. Hand. Rolled. Orecchiette. That was a party in itself! But for the fun of it, we stood in a circle and made the pasta for a good 3 hours. This was a fun task to do, but I can now see why not all restaurants make their own pasta. It is something that can be done during down time or slow season as a special, but other than that, everyday is a lot. As an owner, you would need the money to hire someone just to make pasta all day.


Italian Word of the day: Pasta Filata, Italian for Stretching of the Curd.

When making mozzarella, the curd is placed in boiling water, and stretched out till it is deemed fit to shape. Mozzarella stems from the Italian word Mozzare, which means to cut, as it is cut when it is shaped after the curd is stretched. I found this very interesting as the cheese I have eaten my whole life was truly an Italian verb and action, rather than just a name of the cheese.