Canestrato

A flavorful sheep’s milk cheese from Sicily. For pasta cookery one uses the aged version to grate on Sicilian specialties. The name comes from the word canestro, basket. Traditionally, canestrato is pressed into wicker baskets, which produces a characteristic crisscross design on the crust of the finished cheese. As incanestrato pepato, the cheese has black peppercorns embedded in it, which makes it excitingly piquant when grated. You may substitute it for pecorino in the recipe for Spaghetti al Cacio e Pepe.