Formaggio (Italian Cheese)

"NOSTRANO VALTROMPIA DOP"

It is a traditional cheese from Valtrompia, a beautiful valley in the heart of the Brescia Alps
In its production, 90% of the milk must come from Italian Brown Swiss!

The animals are fed hay in the winter period (produced in the valley floor) while in the summer they eat the grass of the triumpline pastures (produced in the Alpine pastures)

Raw milk sometimes even from several milkings (maximum 4) is partially skimmed by the surfacing of the cream, the last milking can be whole milk; when necessary, the use of natural whey is allowed when necessary, calf rennet is added to the milk

Once the curd has formed, it is broken several times until particles the size of rice grains are obtained, then saffron is added and the curd is cooked in the boiler

As with other cooked cheeses, a copper boiler is used to coagulate the milk and cook the cheese
The Nostrano Valtrompia cheese is matured for at least one year before being marketed in a maturing tunnel once used as a tunnel for the extraction of ferrous minerals which the valley is rich in

The rind is hard and greasy because during the aging it is treated with linseed oil, after the seasoning on the side the "Nostrano Valtrompia" trademark, the manufacturer's data and the production batch are burned

The cheeses have a diameter of 35-45 cm and a height of 8-12 cm

The weight varies from 8 to 18 Kg

The yellow paste of the cheese has medium-small holes spread regularly in the form
It is a savory cheese, often with aromas ranging from animal-lactic to floral, leather, mountain herbs, dried fruit and chestnuts

MILK VEGETABLE COAGULANTS

We have seen how one of humanity's most important discoveries was precisely that of understanding how milk coagulates and what makes it become cheese, fresh first and then aged.

This happened about 7000 years ago but it is only with the Romans that the techniques of milk coagulation begin to be studied.

Already in the first century BC. the Romans wrote about rennet, coagulants and dairy processing techniques

Anything that makes milk in Italy of other than animal origin coagulate goes under the name of "Coagulant", in particular the main vegetable coagulants are:

1. Extracts of Thistle (flower,
Tuscany and Abruzzo in Italy)
2. Thyme extracts
3. Extracts of pine nuts
4. Fig extracts (latex of branches
and leaves, in southern Italy)
5. Extracts of gallium (plant that
gives its name to the aniamal
rennet or “Caglio”)
6. Papaya
7. Etc.

Vegetable coagulants transmit to cheese different organoleptic characteristics to cheese compared to animal rennets!

And while in some cases they have a neutral or negative effect, in other cases the cheeses are produced exclusively with vegetable coagulant and this, as we will see, is their peculiarity on which their culinary use also depends

THE "Mascarpone"

There is a great debate in Italy whether this dairy product should be considered a cheese or a dairy product, however by law it is considered a cheese and I share this thought

It is a typically Lombard cheese from the Lodi area, it was produced in ancient times in the winter when the farmers had many cows in late lactation and therefore the milk was a few and very rich in fats and proteins!
Today it is produced throughout the year but not from milk but from cream (cow or buffalo cream) which are acidified and then coagulated by acid-thermal treatment and subsequent elimination of the whey "spurgo"

There are two methods of acidification:

1) Artisan (with lemon juice)
2) Industrial (acidification with citric acid, composes 3-4% natural lemon juice)

The name derives from “Mascherpa” which means cream of milk or ricotta, has a creamy consistency, suitable for spreading; the taste is delicate of slightly sour cream, and its aroma is reminiscent of milk

It is a very fatty cheese because it is made with 43% fat on it and about 2% protein but it is less fat than butter! However its consumption must be moderate because it is very caloric; great for those who do a lot of sport or otherwise consume energy

It is very delicate, it should be kept in the refrigerator and consumed quickly, 24 hours after opening (it was actually consumed in the winter)

It can be eaten on its own or to prepare savory antipasti or to prepare numerous Italian desserts, the most famous of which is undoubtedly Tiramisu '

Strachitunt PDO

Produced in Val Taleggio, it literally means “round Stracchino”!
When there was little curd to make a whole wheel, it was left in a cloth waiting for the next curd

Hence the technique of combining the two curds, the mold (plate/mould)) is filled in alternate layers with the evening curd combined with that of the morning, this operation goes under the name of "Frugatura"

After 30 days, the cheese wheels are pierced to let air in and facilitate the entry of spontaneous molds, after 75 days the cheese is ready for consumption
The cheese has a cylindrical shape with flat faces with a diameter of 25-28 cm, straight or convex sides of 15-18 cm, while the weight varies from 4 to 6 kg

The rind is thin, clean or flowery, wrinkled with a straw yellow color, tending to gray in the seasoned product
The paste is raw, compact, marbled, straw-white in color, melting under the rind, the marbling if present is characterized by bluish-green veins and creamy streaks

We use whole raw milk from two milkings from the area of origin (Blello, Gerosa, Taleggio, Vedeseta, with a minimum altitude of 700 meters above sea level) of 90% alpine brown cows, fed with grass and hay from the area of origin which must be 65% of the dry matter of the food ration plus 35% of concentrates (cereals and legumes)

The flavor varies from sweet to spicy in the seasoned forms with possible smells and aromas of undergrowth, mushrooms, fresh butter, toast, yeast, dried fruit, ammonia near molds

The Taleggio Valley! Literally a kingdom of the Italian dairy tradition nestled in the Alps

From these pastures we obtain the milk of numerous cheeses including the Strachitunt DOP which I will talk about specifically

This cheese is produced in parallel with gorgonzola but can be considered completely similar to its ancient ancestors !!

A kind of ancestor

The Antioxidant Protection Gradient of Cheese

It is known that cholesterol is bad for you but in addition to being an important molecule for our body (production of hormones, allows the fluidity of cell membranes, etc.),
two things must be considered:

1) There is a genetic basis for which it is more easily accumulated in some subjects in its less good variant
2) The oxidized derivatives of cholesterol, the "OXISTEROLS" are dangerous for health

This is a very important concept because the more antioxidants I have in a cheese, the more cholesterol is protected and this is a direct consequence of the diet (especially for aged cheeses)

Green fodder such as alfalfa, lawns , are sources of antioxidants such as BETA CAROTENE and Vitamin E 🤗🌾🌼🌺🌸

There is a GPA index (ranges from 0 to 20)

GPA = Beta Carotene + Vitamin E / Cholesterol

The higher the value, the greater the protection of cholesterol, as is the case for various mountain pasture cheeses and others produced in Italy ... roughly the yellow color of the cheese is a good indicator if associated with the knowledge of animal nutrition to understand the level of cholesterol protection !!

Taleggio PDO

But are there cheeses with a red-orange rind in Italy?
The answer is certainly yes!

Taleggio Dop has precisely this characteristic and was born between 1000 and 1100 AD right in Val Taleggio, in the Bergamo mountains where the area rich in natural caves offered the ideal environment for the maturation of cheese

Pliny in describing the dairy technologies of the Orobii, speaks of a process very similar to that of Taleggio, Cristoforo da Messisburgo in a culinary treatise speaks of it to the court of the Estensi (Ferrara 1549 AD); the name Taleggio has been used since 900, before it was simply called stracchino.

Features:
Shape - SQUARE PARALLELEPIPED WITH SIDES FROM 18 TO 20 cm
Side - 4/7 cm STRAIGHT WITH FLAT SIDES and 18/20 cm sides
average weight - FROM 1.7 TO 2.2 KG PER cheese shape


Cow's milk, raw or pasteurized, is added with natural lacto-graft or from selected starter cultures and added with liquid calf rennet.
The curd is broken twice to the size of a hazelnut, the dough is then put into molds, once exclusively wrapped in the cloth and placed in wooden boxes with straw stalks on the bottom to give the crust its characteristic streaks (as can be see in the picture)


After stewing and salting, the forms of cheese are left to mature in environments with high humidity (85/90%) and a temperature between 2 and 6 ° C.
During the maturation period, at least 35 days, the shape
it must be frequently turned over and treated with a cloth soaked in brine, it is called a washed crust cheese !!


It is a centripetal ripening cheese, that is, it ripens starting from the rind to the center, initially virtuous yeasts and molds form a felt on which micrococci (virtuous bacteria) responsible for the pink or red-orange color are implanted


As this cheese matures under the crust an almost liquefied soft area is created, Taleggio has a characteristic sweet and sour taste with a truffle and undergrowth aroma, rather sticky in the mouth

The candle in Gorgonzola DOP!

Gorgonzola has these characteristic vertical bluish-green stripes that cross it, in the sweet variant they are less numerous and marked and can also be white-gray in color.

As I have already explained, they are the consequence of the holes made by special needles that allow air to enter the cheese and the growth of good mold in the presence of oxygen

Well these strips of mold are called "Candele" in Italian, from wax candle

As you can see from the photo, the cheese around the mold does not appear opaque but is translucent and almost liquefied, this is very interesting and happens because the mold, in addition to reducing part of the acidity, releases enzymes in the cheese that break up or partially digest proteins and fat !!

The enzymes give the translucent appearance and make the gorgonzola very digestible as well as savory and spicy (predigestion of fats) ... it is certainly a fatty cheese 22-26% fat (as it is) , but is lactose-free 😉

Gorgonzola DOP

It belongs to the stracchini family and was born as a cheese made at the end of the mountain pasture when the cows were brought from Val Sassina (Bergamo) to the plains in autumn, and one of the crossroads of the herds was precisely the city of Gorgonzola, it was in fact called stracchino di gorgonzola .

Stracchino with gorgonzola was favorite cheese of L.V. Beethoven and King George IV of England!

Even Winston Churcill loved him so much that during the Second World War he drew a circle on the map of northern Italy between Novara and Lombardy to indicate to the Royal Air Force pilots the location of the Gorgonzola cheese factories in order to save their production.

There is a spicy gorgonzola (top in the photo) and a sweet gorgonzola (bottom), there are two types of gorgonzola:

- Spicy (medium and small form with 80 and 60 days of aging)
- Sweet (it is a large blue crescenza made starting from the 50s, it must have 50 maturation days)

In ancient times they were produced with two pastes today only one with pasteurized whole cow's milk to which Penicillium roqueforti and yeasts are added, coagulation with veal rennet and raw pasta, dry salting or in brine, then the cheeses are pierced with needles so that the molds can grow in the cheese (blue cheese).

The sweet type has hints of cooked milk and undergrowth; pleasantly fatty sweet taste.

The spicy type is intense and aggressive with smells of mushroom, fermented herbaceous, and also of ammonia; it is more savory and spicy (in ancient times it was aged in a cave)

The production area is divided between part of Piedmont and part of Lombardy.