So Who Cut The Cheese ??

 

So now I understand where this saying comes from. Today were have been to a cheese shop that has been running for centuries high on a hill. Come to think of it most things here are high on a hill around La Marche and the views are amazing but the roads are appalling. So Sandy was doing the usual navigating and helping me to watch her side of the road. Well as I'm a boy and I can't do 2 things at a time!!! 

My focus is to watch the locals coming at me 1/2 on the white line, well if we are luckier enough to have a white line that is.... she is watching the right side  

as apparently I do get a bit....." to close to the edge honey "... and with a drop over the mountain as her view she does sometime look like a parrot with her claw feet attached to the floor mat..... so with again please honey could you move a little closer to the middle that would be great... really great .....so in some place with our mirrors tucked in.... now that why they are on a hinge how cleaver.....it is a bit scary so we slowly make our way up the hill. 

The best thing is the cheese at the top of the hill but the worst thing about getting to the top of the hill is you know that you have to come back down!!!!!

So we " make a park " well that what you do. If there are blue lines look for a pay machine and if there are white ones they are free and well....  if there are no line it a free for all !!! so forwards,  backwards, or anywhere in between 0 and 360 degrees is apparently fine, whether you are blocking the road or not... And if your nose or your bums corner is a bit in well that is coincided a lucky park...... and there are a lot of lucky parkers in Italy that for sure.

As for me I,m a 90 or 180 boy and that way I hope I can still get out later.

Besides that's what the horn is used for, if you are parked in just honk it and the offending parker will appear from the shop and move their car for you.... 

and this is the law un to the Italian people !!!!! With a wave both parties are happy.

So the cheese, what a place it's a small little old deli divided into 2 section the cheese and the wine cella.

The cheese at the first area looks very inviting nice glass display cabinets with large 5 to 10 kg wheels and all sorts of pecorino cheeses ( sheep cheese ) available, average between 25 & 40 € a kg, so you can't come to a cheese shop and not try some and buy some. Beautiful creamery, soft, hard, crumbly and some more aged with a stronger flavour all yum yum.

          Then we move down to the next cabinet and it is filled with flavoured ricotta cheese, small ones,  about as round as a coffee cup and 1/2 the height. On top they are adorned with a rose petal or a sage leaf, thyme, oregano, + other herbs and several fruits, we try the orange, it is fresh and eaten within a couple of days, so soft and with a real hint of the orange with cubes of peel for a hit of the bitterness. This was a winner so that will be with coffee tonight.

A small taller cabinet further down is for the aged fruit ricotta, now that I know that's what it is it it fine!!!! but at first glance it looks like a cabinet that time has stood still and some one has turned off the refrigeration as these sucker look nasty, about 1/2 the size again as the fresh ones but covered in a mould that would turn any stomach and a local goes past and open it up to get one, OMG the smell was chunderious. I look at the assistant and she gestures would I like to try? but a Nhooooo  Nhooooo from me with my head tilted to the side, you Must save these for the locals. I think the rotting mouldy sweet ricotta would be a acquired taste and I do have the hill with all those corners and bends to get back down so perhaps in another life! apparently they only use the little bit in the centre as the rest is " dangerous " hmmm not a word that conjures up try me I'm lovely, more like, come on bad boy make my day !!!! and apparently these are used in special risotto dishes, oh do tell so that when I'm  in a restaurant I will look out for it......... 

But these were not the cheeses we came for, it was the formaggiodi fassa that we have come to find which is very specific to this area of the world and is aged in caves under straw. This process was discovered by accident and I think most " different " food styles from around the world may very well have been discovered this way also, all those centuries ago life expectancy was not so long, perhaps from eating rotting mouldy foods.

But you are here on top of another hill and now after the centuries of getting the process right let try some.

The cheese's were put in these small caves by local of this area when an invading army was coming through and it was discovered with the moulds that lived in these caves it cured the cheese and gave a good taste, go figure, isn't    life wonderful..... as it really tasted great. Not to pretty to look at either as the 3 kg cheese's were wrapped in leaves and then inside of hessian bags and dropped into deep ditches in the cave and retrieve years later. So when you are in the town markets make sure you look for the ugly one's as the other are fakes.

The formaggiodi fassa has a very strong flavour and it goes well with a orange paste that they also make.

There are 3 that we try one wrapped in leaves that smells like a rotting pile of autumn leave ! and is my favourite, how can something that smells so putrid taste so good ??and one that is infused with a muscat grape wine, this one we both like and it has a smell of the smell and taste of sweet muscat grapes. Sooooo yum.... but the other is real nasty and a bit to mouldy and smelly to get any where near the mouth, so at that point it,s a small slab of the others and we are back on the road again. 

There is only so much that the palette can take in one morning........