Advertisement
Mozzarella
Buffalo-milk Cheese
Appears in
By Antonio Carluccio and Priscilla Carluccio
Published 1997
This southern Italian cheese is named after the technique of tearing apart or cutting (mozzata) the whey with the fingers to form balls of cheese. It is mainly produced in Battipaglia in the province of Salerno, but is also made in Caserta and the provinces of Naples, Puglia and Lazio. Authentic buffalo-milk cheese is traditionally produced by only a few specialists, as there is not enough buffalo milk to meet the demands of commercial production.
What makes mozzarella so special is its unusually low fat content. The richness of flavour of the buffalo milk, with only 7 to 7.5% fat content, also gives mozzarella its distinctive taste. The cheese has been made since the thirteenth century and the same techniques used then are still used today. It is said that, in the past, in order to increase milk production the buffaloes were milked one by one to the tune of a lullaby and each one was individually named - real VIP treatment.