Say Cheese! : What's In A Name?
Yesterday I was at Il Contadino, that fancy grocery store that I've mentioned before which has recently been renovated and where you can find a wonderful selection of cheeses. There are a few good cheese stores in Macerata, and I have typically stayed loyal to one called La Casa Del Parmigiano in the city centre--I always go there to buy old standards: classic aged Pecorino, Pecorino Sardo, the Marche cheese Pecorino di Fossa, and cheeses we use in recipes, like Gouda and Edam, and I've always been really happy with the store because their cheeses are excellent quality and their prices are more than reasonable. In fact, I can normally get better deals there than at the big grocery stores, and we've noticed that stuff like their "Yogurt Greco" (which we use as a subsitute for sour cream) is much tastier. I still love that place and go there often, but Il Contadino is nice because, even if the prices are a bit steep, they have this outrageously large selection--it seems like there are new and different cheeses stacked up everywhere, some hiding behind others--the place is just full of all kinds of variety.
So yesterday I had an hour of free time, and I went by there for the first time in a while. I picked out the above cheese, and grabbed a couple of standards: Scoparolo (a new favorite) and Burrata (an old favorite). The unfortunate thing is that I can't seem to remember the name exactly: could it be Pincio? They told me it was a cheese from the Veneto region of Italy, and I think it is a cow's milk cheese--in fact, it reminded Antonello of Grana Padano, a popular DOP cow's milk cheese in Italy that many people use to substitute Parmigiano. I guess it does taste like Grana, and the consistency is quite similar (although this "Pincio" cheese isn't as grainy as Grana Padano) , but I also think that is more flavorful and a bit sharper. I was happy that it wasn't overly sharp--nothing like the Testun that I tried a while back. It's a great aged cheese, and has a slight bitterness to it, which I found pleasing. Anyway, I really liked it, it's a very nice cheese to eat by itself, and I was happy to find a tasty aged cheese that wasn't pecorino this time.
Don't worry, I'll go back to Il Contadino soon and find out what the name of the cheese is! And I might just buy another hunk of it to eat with lunch. :)
Have a great weekend, and enjoy your cheeses! Sorry I have been so bad about reading other people's blogs--I really need to catch up!
-Jackie
1 Comments:
High 5 on the burrata! We picked one up for lunch today...what a country we live in no? Where the burrata is the freshest that you can ever imagine, and the best thing is that it doesn't cost an arm and a leg!
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