Raw milk, cooked pasta, seasoning: let's make things clear. Raw milk cheese is one in which the taste of milk is expressed in all its splendor – and many cheeses that we know are just like that
The cheeses can be classified according to the type of milk used, the quantity of water, fat and maturing. Raw milk cheese is a cheese that is produced using freshly-milked, unpasteurized milk, like what we find at the supermarket to drink.
Raw milk, cooked pasta
Pasteurized milk undergoes a heat treatment which eliminates any harmful bacteria (but unfortunately also the positive ones) and is heated to 71 ° C for 15 seconds (or to about 63 ° C for at least 30 minutes). We do not mess up though. To become cheese, the milk is made to curdle, and this process can take place at temperatures equal to the environmental ones, or at higher temperatures: hence the classification in raw or cooked cheeses.
If the curd is brought to a temperature equal to or less than 42 ° C, it is called raw cheese (like robiola or Parmigiano Reggiano), if instead a heating occurs that exceeds 46 ° C, semi-paste cheeses are produced. cooked and cooked (such as Fontina, Montasio, Bitto …).
All the flavor of the pasture
Large companies prefer to work with pasteurized milk because it is easier to manage at a sanitary level and has a more standard taste, due to heat treatment and because it is normally milked from cows that live in the barn, which feed with feed or hay, certainly less fragrant and varied than a natural diet like that of mountain meadows.
The cheese is made of milk and keeps all its aromas and perfumes, for better or for worse. If the cows live in the open air this means that in the cheese you can find all the flavor of the pastures, the herbs and the area where they are happy: "Behind every cheese there is a pasture of a different green under a different sky" , Italo Calvino wrote. The industry does not work, but the malgas and many small producers, which in the name of quality, aromatic complexity and respect for ancient traditions, as well as animal welfare, use raw milk for their own cheeses. They are a minority, and even a movement has emerged, Resistenza Casearia, promoted by Slow Food, precisely to enhance these niche productions.
The culture of raw milk
What is missing is a widespread culture that recognizes raw milk cheeses for their value. For this reason Eataly has chosen to bring in its stores, up to the center of the big cities, many of the 90 Presidia that Slow Food has started on the national territory to enhance traditional cheeses that use this method of production (many of which are also protected by the of protected origin). From Eataly in the dedicated desk you will find around one fifty cheeses, all selected from small, often very small productions, some available throughout Italy, different from region to region and from point of sale to point of sale. We often speak of niche cheeses, unknown to the most and very local, unavailable if not directly in dairies, which would remain unattainable to those who live in cities like Milan or Rome.
Although in our imagination raw milk cheeses are in fact fresh and slightly seasoned, as it is Robiola Roccaverano Dop, based on goat's milk, are also several aged cheeses, known as Parmigiano Reggiano. But what you find from Eataly has nothing to do with "the Parmigiani" that are often found on the market: they are the result of the work of micro-dairies, often family members who, even under the hat of a strong name, operate in a artisan and offering a reduced quantity, but surprising in taste. An example is the Parmigiano Red Cows 24 months of the Consortium, produced with milk of Reggiana Red Cows fed on grass and hay.
The seasonality of cheeses exists
There Fontina D'Aosta Dop it is the most typical cheese of the Val d'Aosta, and in the winter it expresses its best. Why? Because even the cheeses have their own seasonality! This cheese is produced only with milk from this region produced from Valdostana cows that feed on the Valle d'Aosta hay in winter, in the barn, and in the summer of herbs that grow naturally in the meadows and on the mountain pastures. The flavor of these wild plants is found all in the milk, with which, during the summer, the fontina is produced, which after months of aging in the cave (80 days at least), reaches up to our tables. In October the first forms of product arrive in the hut and in winter the long-aged forms are at their maximum splendor.
The same seasonality applies to other aged cheeses, such as the Bra Tenero Dop d'Alpeggio and for the Castelmagno D'Alpeggio DOP, Slow Food Presidium of Piedmont with an intense flavor and loved by enthusiasts. Compared to that produced in the valley, this cheese from the malgari is worked at altitudes of over 1,600 meters, according to the ancient technique – and the professional tasters can even recognize, as in a good wine, the different production pastures.
With what to match them
Not only in northern Italy are raw milk cheeses. To the south, one example is the Provola delle Madonie (classic and smoked) Slow Food Presidium, produced in Sicily in a mountainous area close to the sea. The provola is a spun paste cheese and to better appreciate it, we recommend, as tradition dictates, to combine it with a bread of durum wheat cooked in wood and a red wine with little structure. The raw milk cheeses are real specialties, and to better appreciate them they serve combinations that enhance the quality, without covering the flavor. Perfect, good bread with sourdough like rye bread, durum wheat or a simple one like the Mediterranean or Rustic, made with milled flour of natural stone from Mulino Marino, and on sale in all the bakeries of Eataly.
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