Caciocavallo cheese: the best addition to your dinner

Added: 05/22/2006

Italy is one of the famous centres of food-making in the world. Cooking is art in this country where it is a shame not to be able to cook a dish, which will be long-remembered by guests and family members. Each holiday in this country turns into the exhibition of food masterpieces and skills of professional chefs. And if you visit Italy you will understand that it is absolutely impossible to leave this country hungry - the one just cannot resist the temptation to taste all these delicious courses and meals.

Even a child knows that the most popular dishes in the Italian cuisine are pizzas and pastas. These courses are easy to cook, very tasty and do not need much time - what can be better if you come home late in the evening after a hard working day with the only hope to fall yourself onto a cozy sofa in your hospitable sitting-room and forget about everything except rest and a good dinner. In this case the very these dishes usually come to the rescue. Less than half an hour - and you are back to the sofa with a delicious pizza on the table in front of you.

But a normal question in this situation is how they can eat the same dishes every day. You will be surprised if know the answer: the numerous variants of different snacks and sauces bring a variety into these routine, at first sight, dinners. And perhaps, the most popular snack and ingredient for sauces in Italy is cheese. The country produces a lot of different sorts of this wonderful product, which can be also used separately. And Caciocavallo cheese is one of those sorts, which always finds its place on the table of not only Italians, but other folks all across Europe.

Caciocavallo cheese has a very strange name, which gives birth to numerous hypotheses and theories about its origin. The literal translation from Latin gives us 'cheese on horseback'. An army of scientists try to find what is it expected to mean. Some say the cheese was originally made from mare's mil; others state that the cheese was transported on horseback. The most popular theory has nothing in common with horses and it says that the Caciocavallo cheese is a copy of the ancient Turkish cheese with the name 'qasqawal'. But ordinary Italians do not think about the origin of the name of their favorite cheese. They just enjoy it using in dishes or as a separate meal.

The Caciocavallo cheese has a long history. Its production began in the 14th century in Sicily and since that time the quality of this cheese has never been bad. Only cow's milk is used to make this product, which has different flavor and color depending on age. The young Caciocavallo has a light, a little salty flavor and smooth texture. With ageing it becomes sharper and more pungent and the texture becomes more granular. So, it is nothing weird in the fact that the very mature Caciocavallo is usually used for the dishes, which require grated cheese. As for the young Caciocavallo (aged about two months), it is perfect in salads and pies.

If you need this cheese for some of your dishes you should know that its flavor may be dolce (sweet) when the cheese is very young, piccante (piquant) when the cheese was aged about two months, and affumicato (smoked). In the latter case the cheese has a wonderful slightly bitter taste, especially attractive for the connoisseurs of the Italian cuisine. Anyway, you are not to be afraid of choosing the right cheese for your holiday or everyday table. Whatever sort of a wonderful Italian cheese you choose, it will always be perfect with different dishes and meals and give an unusual flavor even to your most common and often-made courses. Develop your cooking skills with Italian cheeses and admire the result.

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