Some notes on cheese & my introduction to cacioricotta

Cacioricotta– a goats milk cheese that is semisoft and easily grated. It comes from Puglia and is pervasive in the south of Italy, Giuseppe tells me. 

“When I was young I loved this cheese so much, and I thought it was the only cheese there was. This was my definition of cheese. When I came to the north for the first time and I found out that this was not their cheese, that they use grana* instead on their pasta, I was depressed.”

He said this as if he was sad for the “ignorant” northeners for not understanding wonderful cheese, but also for cacioricotta itself. Depressed that his cheese was not preferred all over Italy. That not everyone loved it and knew it as an everyday pleasure like he did. Maybe also that he had taken caciocirotta for granted.

He was excited to share it with me. His parents had visited recently, so his fridge was lined with his “reserve” of his mother’s ragu in glass jars.

“You will love my mother” he said, referring to the fact that he was serving me her sauce for dinner. Through the sauce alone, I would know and love her. Among the other treats they left were the cacioricotta and sealed hunks of homemade bread he had almost forgotten about.

“The best bread in the world. And, the best cheese of the world.” 

Cacioricotta comes in a little round wheel wrapped in plastic. 

I think of myself, young, too young to tie my own shoes, in my childhood kitchen in Ocean Grove, coming home each day after school and wanting cheese. Always a slice of cheese. One. Cheese was yellow, square and came in slices from the deli. And I loved it. Cold from the fridge. I loved the thought of my slice being peeled off the stack of cheese. One slice in the stack for each day. I liked to fold each corner off and eat them one by one. 

It’s hard for me to return to that blue tiled kitchen in my memory without thinking of those slices of cheese. 

I told Giuseppe that goat cheese, the standard soft kind (I guess you would say it’s in the French style) is my favorite cheese. Which is true, now. Now that I’m no longer a little girl and I know about cheese that doesn’t come from a deli counter.

I love goat cheese in so many forms. I eat goat cheese with honey. On a sandwich, almost any sandwich, with apples, swirled with fruit, on pasta, in pasta, with chicken, plain from the tip of a butter knife.

I love goat cheese for it’s versatility, but somehow tomato sauce wasn’t something I had ever paired it with. Goat cheese seemed to belong to creamy or sweet tastes only. But, even as I’m thinking this, I know Giuseppe would tell me 
“It is not just fromaggi di capra, it is on it’s own. It’s cacioricotta!” 

Cacioricotta is not exactly as tangy or as soft as Chevre, typical goat cheese. Chevre, the brand in France and also America, is the form in which I usually buy goat cheese. The spreadable Chevre in a little box or dense and sliceable in a roll.

I grated the cacioricotta while the pasta cooked and tapped it over the food when it was ready. The cacioricotta looked pretty grated on food. It did not melt and disappear so easily. More than grana, it looked like curly snow over the fresh pasta with meatballs and Giuseppe’s mother’s homemade sauce that we ate. 

*Grana refers to pecorino romano or what we would call Parmesan cheese in North America. However, in Italy, Parmesan only comes from Parma. Otherwise it is grana.