I’m convinced there are two types of people in this world: those who’ve eaten buffalo mozzarella and those who haven’t. Many people might think they’ve indulged in the real deal and, having convinced themselves of it, go along happily believing themselves complete.
I counted myself among those people, having once opened a watery bag of buffalo cheese straight from Italy. It was bland, watery stuff but everything the package indicated led me to believe I’d joined that elite group of people who had eaten something incredible. Accepting I was wrong was a hard lesson to learn. The cheese may have been produced in Italy, it may have been made from buffalo milk and it might even have been authentic, but it certainly didn’t change my life. It took an Italian, third generation, traditional cheesemaker by the name of Paolo D’Oria to lead me to a new world.
Monforte Dairy plans to make a line of buffalo cheeses at our new dairy; both a traditional mozzarella and an aged blue. I won’t fib and tell you it’s been an easy road; we’ve had dozens of R&D trials and more questions than answers. So we jumped at the chance to spend a day with a man who makes mozzarella for himself. The date was set for a recent Monday in February at Purple Hill Farms, the home of a local water buffalo herd. There, in the country kitchen Paolo would teach us a few secrets about the cheese that stretches.
Monforte has visited the water buffalo – those lumbering, beautiful creatures who are more like friendly dogs than one ton milk giving animals – many times, but this day was different. It was about making cheese under Paolo’s watchful eye.
Rachel (who’s been making cheese at Monforte since we began), and I came equipped with all the trappings of modern science. PH monitors and thermometers in hand, we hovered near Paolo and his giant pot of steaming milk. Now and again, when we thought Paolo wasn’t looking, we slipped our instruments into the thick white liquid, only to be caught by his watchful eye and reproached gently but firmly.
“Those things lie,” he declared. We confessed it’s our way to measure and record. Paolo smiled and shrugged, “you do it your way, I do it mine.”
It wasn’t that Paolo was opposed to technology, he just didn’t think it was efficient. While Rachel and I dipped our gizmos into the milk and waited for a solid reading, Paolo simply used his hands, dipping his finger into the same liquid, instantly “reading” what his fingers felt. It was both precise and altogether intuitive.
This is old-school cheesemaking, the sort of thing that’s been done for thousands of years, before anyone even dreamed of measuring the acid level of cheese. This is the cheese making that still takes place in kitchens all around the world, tradition passed from one generation to the next.
The little country kitchen serving as our make room since the early morning was filled with an earthy thick aroma. Paolo answered our many questions with a friendly shrug or an easy smile. His reply to our frequent questions about timing was usually “it’ll be ready when it’s ready.” Hi process wasn’t about science or formulas, it was about making something beautiful and delicious. There were rules of course, guidelines and predictions, but it was fluid and natural.
“This is nonno cheese”, Paolo would said with a smile, handing both Rachel and me a bit of soft curd, which smelled and tasted like caramel. Nonno means grandfather in Italian and just like his grandfather, Paolo had begun teaching the principles of cheese making to his granddaughter. He taught us with the same gentle chiding and smiling we imagined he used with his own family.
By the end of the day, we managed to create what Paolo called an ‘acceptable’ mozzarella. It’s hard to describe a proper mozzarella stretch, but I promise you it’s something wonderful. Watching it move like soft toffee was almost the highlight of the day, almost as good as eating the thing itself. And while Rachel and I will still use our meters and gizmos, I’m sure every once and a while, when we get to make some for ourselves. we’ll try to do it the old way, the way nonno does it.
