Real mozzarella. Mozzarella

Mozzarella (Mozzarella di Bufala) is one of the most famous and widespread Italian. Mozzarella is a soft young cheese that can and should even be eaten immediately after production.

Nothing compares to fresh mozzarella with a pleasant, delicate taste of buffalo milk! Once you taste real mozzarella, you will never be able to refuse it.

It is still unknown who brought the buffaloes to Italy. Some say that Hannibal, others that the Arabs, and some believe that the Indians. It is also believed that this cheese appeared in the XII century and was invented quite by accident.

At that time, as you know, there were no refrigerators, and here the locals of a small town in the Campania region stored milk in the stomach of a buffalo in a cellar. Once they completely forgot about milk, and when they remembered, they found cheese in the form of a ball with a soft curd mass inside.

Over time, the cheese spread to other regions of Italy. Today, the best mozzarella is produced in the Campania region, especially the mozzarella from Caserta and Battipaglia is considered to be beyond praise.

At the beginning of the 20th century, northern Italy began a reform to drain the marshland, and for buffalo, this environment is ideal. As a result, the animal population has been greatly reduced. And the peasants began to produce mozzarella from ordinary cow's milk. Now you can find mozzarella made from cow and buffalo milk, however, mozzarella di buffalo is an order of magnitude more expensive, so sometimes you have to look for it.

Dear reader, to find an answer to any question about holidays in Italy, use. I answer all questions in the comments under the relevant articles at least once a day. Your guide in Italy Artur Yakutsevich.

In addition to milk, another distinguishing feature of mozzarella is its gooey texture. Milk is boiled at a certain temperature, after the whey begins to separate, the contents are constantly stirred, a viscous mass of pasta filata is gradually formed. And the most interesting thing is that the craftsmen start sculpting and cutting (mozzare) the cheese, and this process is called “mozzatura”. Hence the name of the cheese. The process is not easy, cheese makers with tenderness and love pull the cheese, forming smooth balls, even, neat. The mozzarella is then immersed in a saline solution to keep it fresh and soft.

Types of mozzarella

Mozzarella comes in 4 types:

• fresh (fior di latte from cow's milk and di bufala - from buffalo);
• pressed (mozzarella solido);
• stretched (in the form of a pigtail trecce and knots nodini);
• smoked (Mozzarella affumicata).

These can be large balls - bocconcini, slightly smaller balls, the size of a large cherry - ciliegine, and very small ones - perlini, or maybe mozzarella in the form of a pigtail (trecce) or twisted knots (nodini). Some manufacturers invent their own method of twisting mozzarella, so to speak, their trademark. It is in the Campania region that many home-made mozzarella productions have been preserved, which from the very early morning cook this incredibly delicious cheese for the locals.

Campania buffalo mozzarella has the Mozzarella di Bufala Campana D.O.P. Except in Campania, this cheese is produced in the regions of Lazio and Sicily.

If you get the chance to go on a food tour, like I did, and end up at a cheese factory at 5am, be sure to take it. The scents that are in the air are incredible. And freshly cooked mozzarella will exceed all your expectations. The taste is slightly fresh, but very delicate, thin, milky. Fresh mozzarella has a creamy, soft texture and resembles a sponge. When you cut the ball with a knife, a white liquid flows out of it - milk.

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This cheese is the basis of classic Italian. Ripe bright red tomato, snow-white mozzarella pearls, juicy green basil, a little oregano and greenish-gold olive oil create a joyful mood on the plate - a gastronomic idyll.

There are many ways to enjoy soft mozzarella: antipasti - mozzarella and or tuna tartare in a creamy mozzarella sauce; - with tomatoes, black olives and mozzarella or mozzarella tortelli, couscous with mozzarella or arancini rice balls with mozzarella, peas and, or in a crescent-shaped Sicilian closed calzone. And this list is endless, simply because mozzarella is the perfect and best cheese, and my love for it is inexplicable.
Buon appetito!

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It is used in dishes such as lasagne, casseroles, salads, pies and of course pizza.

Pasta with mozzarella

Italian pasta with soft cheese is very easy to make. At the same time, you need to take only 250g of pasta, the same amount of tomatoes, 200g of mozzarella, spices, oil (vegetable) and basil sprigs. Pasta is boiled in salted water, while the cheese is cut into neat small cubes. The basil also needs to be finely chopped. Chopped tomatoes, greens and cheese are mixed, turning into a salad that needs to be salted and peppered. Hot pasta is first laid out on a plate, and the resulting mixture is beautifully seasoned on top. So the dish is served at the dinner table.

mozzarella cheese in salad

You can quickly whip up a good summer and very light dish, in which mozzarella cheese will play the main role. Recipes often require this ingredient to be added to salads. For the classic Italian version, you will need the cheese itself (about 200g), 3 tomatoes, olives (better if they are pitted), basil, a spoonful of olive oil, the same amount of lemon juice and spices to taste.

Tomatoes are cut into thin slices. Cheese is divided into slices or neat cubes. In a salad bowl, lay out the dish in alternate layers. Top salad is decorated with olives and chopped herbs. Just before serving, a light salad is seasoned with spices, lemon juice and oil.

Mozzarella cheese for sandwiches

They are considered a favorite dish for breakfast. To prepare a similar, but original dish in the Italian style, you will need to take a few slices of bread, 3 tomatoes, 250g mozzarella, a couple of cloves of garlic, 2 onions, butter, herbs, spices and vegetable oil, which can be replaced with olive.

The onion is cut into rings, the garlic is very finely chopped. Tomatoes and cheese are carefully chopped into slices. Each slice of bread is smeared with butter and sprinkled with garlic. Only then put pieces of mozzarella, tomatoes and onion rings on top.

All sandwiches are placed on a baking sheet, which has already been previously oiled. In this form, the dish is placed in the oven for 10 minutes. Ready-made breakfast sandwiches can be decorated with sprigs of greens, as well as flavored with the necessary spices if necessary.

Original mozzarella in eggplant

A delicious appetizer with cheese and nuts will be ideal for the festive table. To do this, you need to take eggplant, cheese, hazelnuts, garlic, mint leaves and spices. It is best to use eggplants in cooking, which are very young and small in size. They are cut lengthwise with thin plastics, salted and peppered. Then they are fried in a pan.

Nuts are crushed in a blender. The mint is finely chopped, and the garlic is squeezed out. One tablespoon of boiling water is poured into this mixture, and seasoned with salt and pepper.

Eggplants are smeared with garlic mixture, a piece of mozzarella is placed inside, which is rolled in mint and nuts, and then the roll is wrapped and fastened with a toothpick. And that's it, the dish is ready!

Mozzarella cheese for pizza

There are over 500 different types of Italian pizza. And it's even easier to cook. First, the dough is made, for which you need to take 3 cups of flour, 2 tablespoons of olive oil, salt and sugar (a little), a glass of milk and dry yeast (about 5g).

First, the yeast is diluted in milk. In a separate bowl, mix half the flour, salt, sugar, and olive oil. Yeast liquid is also poured into this mass. Only then add the rest of the flour. The dough should be thoroughly kneaded by hand. For about half an hour or even an hour, it is left alone in a warm place. Only then the dough is laid out on a baking sheet as the basis for pizza.

The filling for this dish can be very different. However, almost never without mozzarella cheese. The most popular Italian pizza, Capricciosa, for example, is topped with finely chopped tomatoes, mozzarella pieces, olives, mushrooms, and artichokes. Together with the filling, the pizza is baked in the oven for 10-15 minutes. And ready-made and fragrant pieces are served to the table to the delight of children and adults.

We have already shown you how one variety of Italian cheese is made. Today we will talk about another, better known in the world, and to us cheese. But already from the name it is clear that we will talk about mozzarella. This cute duck is molded from mozzarella cheese paste, the production of which I promised to introduce my readers to.

And these are the very “signorinas” represented by Signor Filippo himself. Remember how lovingly the cheese maker called his caciocavallo cheeses "signorinas". Similarly, he refers to mozzarella. Whatever you say, these are his creations, each of which contains a piece of life. It is difficult not to respect the work of a hereditary cheese maker, the wonderful fruits of which can be immediately appreciated by taste.

Before tasting mozzarella, it still needs to be done. I remind you that now you can see how mozzarella is made from cow's milk, which is known as fior di latte.

Fresh milk is filtered, heated with steam to a temperature of 35 degrees and fermented with a certified enzyme preparation made from the abomasum of small calves.

The fermentation time of milk depends on its natural acidity and ambient temperature. In the warm season, the process lasts 30-40 minutes, in the cold - up to 60. It still takes about 20 minutes to let the milk clot thicken and get stronger, after which it is broken into pieces the size of a nut.
Breaking the milk clot is carried out in two stages. First, a cross is drawn on the surface of the clot and left for 5-10 minutes, and then the clot is vigorously mixed to the very bottom with a special tool with a metal nozzle.

Small particles of milk clot begin to settle to the bottom. Now you need to wait until the milk clot matures under the whey, i.e. reaches an acidity of pH 4.8-4.9, under which the melted cheese mass will stretch well.

A poorly ripened clot can later give a too dense mass, because. will require too much hot water to melt, which will lead to irreversible fat loss.

An overripe sour clot will be too "dry" to melt, and the texture of mozzarella from such a material will be lumpy. In any case, the non-optimal acidity of the milk clot will then affect the weight of the final product, and most importantly, its taste.

The industrial production of mozzarella is accompanied by laboratory analyzes that allow you to correctly determine the moment of the beginning of filature, i.e. melting the cheese clot with hot water, from which mozzarella is formed. In the conditions of a small cheese factory, such an analysis is done empirically.
To do this, a small amount of milk clot is heated in boiling water and checked for "rubbery", i.e. the resulting paste should stretch well and show some resistance.

If a pigtail is easily knitted from the stretched paste, you can proceed to filature.
From the moment of fermentation of milk to the beginning of the filature of the milk clot, it takes somewhere a little more than an hour and a half.
Now the milk clot must be separated from the whey. This operation is already performed on the table, where the mass of the clot is well squeezed out, pressed and left for final maturation for another thirty minutes. In the last post about the production of cacciocavallo cheese, the blogger clarified that this process is called cheddaring.

The clot that has condensed after draining the whey is cut into thin pieces using a special machine. Then it is poured with boiling water and kneaded. At the same time, a saturated salt solution is added to the cheese mass.
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In traditional cheese dairies, cheese paste is still kneaded by hand using wooden spatulas.

During the filature of cheese paste, it is extremely necessary to maintain a constant high temperature of the water in the region of 85-90 degrees. Therefore, part of the cooling water is replaced by boiling water.

The water in which the cheese mass is melted, the so-called "acqua bianca", washes away a significant part of the acidity, fats and proteins from the pasta. Therefore, all water after the production of cheeses is collected and used in feeding pigs. It is not for nothing that pig breeding always develops in parallel in places with developed cheese production.

The filature of pasta for mozzarella is about the same as for caciocavallo cheese. The melted cheese mass is stretched into an elastic "rope".
Signor Filippo rolls one of the ends of the "rope" into a ball and tears it off. This moment of separation is called "mozza". It is not difficult to guess that it is in it that the origin of the word "mozzarella" lies.

Then, a future mozzarella weighing up to 1 kg is formed from a torn off piece of pasta. This process of mozzarella “balling” forces one to sacrifice a small piece of pasta, which also has to be torn off. From this torn off piece, a pigtail is made, which housewives buy for pizza, because. the pigtail paste is denser than in regular mozzarella and does not leave a lot of liquid on the pizza afterwards.

Small weight mozzarellas (150 g) are made using a machine that was purchased back in the early 70s.
The melted cheese mass is loaded into the machine and pushed through the holes to a rotating drum with nests for mozzarella. From the nests, ready-made standard mozzarellas fall into cold water.

Cold water stops the process of filamentation inside the cheese and contributes to some compaction of the mozzarella paste.

Such "shock therapy" leads to the fact that mozzarella paste in the first hours after its production can be somewhat fibrous. Therefore, the best taste of mozzarella is achieved after some “rest” of the cheese, during which the compressed protein strands of the cheese paste relax, and the mozzarella becomes more elastic.

Mozzarella remains in cold water until sold. Customers receive mozzarella in a bag along with the water in which it was cooled.

Differs in short term of maturing. After manual milking (and this is one of the conditions for obtaining a real taste) within 12 hours, black buffalo milk gets to the cheese makers. The entire production process takes a maximum of 6 hours. The ideal option is to consume the cheese on the day of release. If you ever visit Italian restaurants, you will see the prefix next to the name "Mozzarella" on the menu giornata, this will mean that 24 hours have not passed since the production.

How and with what to eat Mozzarella cheese to enjoy all the shades of its taste:

• It can be found in salads and as a pizza topping - the exquisite taste of young cheese adds a piquant touch to dishes.
• In Italy, it is believed that mixing mozzarella with something else is an unforgivable waste. The cheese balls are layered and served as an independent dish, which complements only basil greens and slices of ripe tomatoes. Sometimes the so-called caprese appetizer is flavored with a little olive oil and seasoned with black pepper.
• In addition to tomatoes and basil, you can add a little ham and freshly baked homemade bread to the cheese.
• It is recommended to serve a glass of semi-dry white wine. The taste of the drink should be refreshing and soft, the wine aged. The light sourness of wines from Veneto and Lombardy is considered the best flavor for mozzarella.

In our country, the production of this delicate and tasty cheese has been successfully mastered, and the products are in active demand of consumers.

Mozzarella for cooking

Russian Mozzarella cheese from the Aiti brand is a rich assortment, both for ordinary consumers and for businesses - restaurants, cafes, pizzerias. We know that in Russia this wonderful Italian cheese often becomes a desirable ingredient in the preparation of casseroles, pasta, salads, meat. That's why we offer mozzarella in a convenient form that's easy to use in snacks, pizzas and more.

• Cheese Mozzarella Benevento, mass fraction of fat 46%, package 2 kg;
• Cheese product Mozzarella Pizza Topping, fat mass fraction 50%, 2 kg package for pizza.

In Homer's poem "The Odyssey", created in the 7th-8th centuries BC. e., the process of making mozzarella cheese is described: “Polyphemus milked goats and sheep, as is customary for everyone. White took half of the milk, instantly fermented it, immediately squeezed it out and put it in baskets woven tightly ... ". This proves once again that humanity has long been familiar with such a product as soft. The Bedouins of the Ancient East, who transported milk in bags from veal stomachs, found by the end of the journey that due to heat, shaking and the active work of enzymes, it turned into a dense white mass, amazingly tasty.

Mozzarella is an indispensable cheese in Italian cuisine.

It turns out that mozzarella is soft milk that is not drunk, but eaten. This variety is classified as a brine cheese, as it ripens and is stored in brine and does not have the usual hard rind. Soft Italian cheese is made from buffalo or cow's milk. It’s hard to imagine salads, casseroles, lasagna, calzone pie, caprese appetizer and pizza without tender mozzarella, because mozzarella stretches very well when warm. Mozzarella is prepared by fermenting milk with a thermophilic lactic acid culture, adding rennet, after which the mixture is heated until whey is separated. The resulting elastic base for cheese is kneaded until an elastic mass is obtained, balls are rolled up and placed in a cold brine.

There are different types of mozzarella. Large balls are called bocconcini, cherry-sized balls are called chileggini, tiny peas resembling pearls are perlini cheese. And sometimes mozzarella is woven in the form of a pigtail - this is trachcha. Small balls are usually sold in brine, where they float freely.

Mozzarella has a thin, shiny and smooth skin, a slightly layered creamy structure, a milky aroma, and it tastes very pleasant, although fresh, but it blends perfectly with other products without interrupting their taste.

Mozzarella is a popular cheese in Russia, and in the store you can find it not only in the form of balls, but also formed into rolls stuffed with sun-dried tomatoes and olives. In Italy, mozzarella stuffed with Parma ham and prosciutto is one of the favorite varieties.

By the way, a little secret - mozzarella should not be heated for too long, as it dries out and becomes tasteless, so it is better to add it to pizza at the very end of cooking. Also, mozzarella is not frozen, otherwise it turns into a curd mass. Store it for 48 hours, and hard varieties of mozzarella - up to four days.

Caprese from the island of Capri

This snack matches the color of the Italian flag, so it is considered the national Italian dish. You will need soft mozzarella cheese, juicy and tasty tomatoes, quality olive oil, black pepper and salt. To prepare this dish, the inhabitants of Capri take real Italian buffalo cheese, bull's-heart tomatoes and olive oil with a delicate taste, without bitterness.

Lay the tomato slices on a flat plate, garnish each with a mozzarella ball and cover with a basil leaf. Drizzle it all with olive oil, salt and pepper and serve caprese with dry wine.

How many types of mozzarella do you know?

It seems that mozzarella is prepared according to one recipe, but there are several varieties of this cheese. Mozzarella di Bufala is a classic mozzarella made exclusively from buffalo milk. Such cheese is very expensive and rarely appears in stores, most often it is brought to order in fashionable restaurants directly from Italy.

Cheese production in Russia has now risen to a higher level, but despite this, we cannot find such a variety. If you see the inscription “Mozzarella di Bufala” on the package and its cost is quite affordable, and the expiration date is long enough, then this is not Buffalo.

Mozzarella fior di latte differs from Buffalo only in that it is made from cow's milk. Only an experienced gourmet will notice the subtleties of taste differences, but this cheese is also produced only in Italy.

Mozzarella solido is a cheese destined for worldwide shipping. It is packed in a thermal bag and therefore can be stored for a long time. Mozzarella trecce and Mozzarella nodini are mozzarella braided or knotted. Smoked mozzarella is called Mozzarella affumicata, and mozzarella with a dense structure is called Mozzarella Galbani. This is what is used to make pizza. Mozzarella Unagrande is a Russian version of Italian cheese that has a very competitive price and an acceptable shelf life.

Burrata: mozzarella with a surprise

Burrata is a rather young cheese, since it was prepared a hundred years ago. Cheese makers refer it to one of the types of pickled cheeses. Outwardly, the burrata looks like a ball of mozzarella, in which a delicate creamy filling is hidden. The method of making this cheese is similar to the technology of making mozzarella, only a bag is made from each ball and filled with cream and pieces of cheese. The balls are wrapped in asphodel or banana leaves, and then a bag is tied, the weight of which is 250-500 g. It ripens in the leaves and acquires a greenish tint. Take the burrata out of the fridge before eating so that the cheese reaches room temperature, which maximizes its creamy taste and aroma.

In Italy, burrata is also added to pizza, but before cooking, so that it does not acquire a watery texture. This cheese is also good for Greek salad. Burrata is also eaten on its own, sprinkled with salt, pepper and sprinkled with olive oil. Burrata is served with fresh and cooked vegetables, tomatoes, boiled eggs and fresh homemade bread. This kind of cheese goes well with fruits, nuts and honey. You should not season burrata with some bright spices, so as not to drown out its delicate and refined taste.

Before serving, cut the cheese head in half, drizzle with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and then put chopped fresh tomatoes in the filling. Sandwiches and toasts with burrata are very tasty - when the filling is spread over bread and sprinkled with herbs on top.

Strawberry salad with burrata

Cover the plate with spinach and lettuce leaves. Top with 200 g of quartered strawberries and slices of burrata - one cheese head is enough for a salad.

For the sauce, mix 2 tbsp. l. any nut butter, 1 tbsp. l. balsamic vinegar and a small shallot, which must first be finely chopped. Pepper the sauce, pour over the salad and garnish with pine nuts.

Stracciatella: cheese strands in cream

What could be tastier than stracciatella - soft Italian cheese, which is cheese threads filled with thick cream! This cheese is quite easy to prepare. Mozzarella, cut into halves, is immersed in a brine heated to 80 ° C, and after a minute cheese strands are pulled out of it, which are immediately lowered into chilled cream.

Stracciatella is served with vegetables and fruits, but Italians, among other things, make delicious soups from it, spread it on bruschetta, add it to vegetable and fruit salads. A favorite Italian appetizer is stracciatella, arugula, tomatoes, olive oil and black pepper. If you serve cheese with thinly sliced ​​ham and melon cubes, you get an exquisite delicacy. Stracciatella pairs perfectly with flat pappardelle pasta, and if you season the dish with an interesting sauce, you get a real delicious meal!

Green risotto with stracciatella

Sauté a clove of garlic, a finely chopped shallot and a sprig of thyme in olive oil. Add 240g arborio rice and fry it lightly. Pour 100 ml of dry white wine into the rice and let it evaporate with constant stirring. Then pour in a little chicken broth and cook again, stirring, until the liquid has completely evaporated. Pour in 700 ml of broth in small portions.

Salt and pepper the rice, remove from heat, add 60 g butter and 100 g chopped Parmesan. Stir the risotto until creamy. Grind in a blender 200 g of fresh spinach, 50 g of basil and the same amount of parsley. If necessary, add a little water while beating. Add green puree to risotto.

Remove the garlic and thyme from the dish, put 100 g stracciatella in a saucepan, stir quickly so that it does not have time to melt, and put on plates. Top with the remaining stracciatella, drizzle with olive oil and pepper.

Feta, cheese and suluguni: "brothers in mind" mozzarella

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What other pickled cheeses are there? This group also includes feta, cheese and suluguni. Greek feta cheese is made from sheep's and goat's milk, it is a loose and crumbly cheese in texture with a pleasant cottage cheese smell. It cannot be thinly sliced ​​or spread on bread, as it crumbles a lot. Feta is made from curdled milk, which is first filtered and separated from the whey, and then hung in linen bags to completely remove moisture. After that, the cheese is laid out in molds and covered with salt or poured with brine, leaving to ripen from 2 weeks to 2-3 months. Feta is also stored in brine, but in the highlands it is customary to keep it in olive oil. Feta is traditionally added to a Greek salad, although this cheese goes well with any vegetable and herb, especially olive oil dressing.

Cheese is made from any milk, including buffalo, fermented with rennet. After that, the curd mass is laid out under a press, cut into pieces and soaked in brine or marinade. Cheese is good in salads, in pies and rolls, with meat, fish, eggs, vegetables, cereals, legumes and fruits. Delicious cheese with sour cream and fresh bread. To reduce the saltiness of the cheese, you can soak it for a couple of minutes in boiling water.

Suluguni is a pickled Georgian cheese, characterized by a layered texture and a pleasant salty taste. The first stage of its preparation is like cheese, but after pressing, suluguni is cut into bundles and melted at a temperature of 80 ° C. After that, a homogeneous mass is laid out in molds, immersed in cold water to solidify and transferred to other molds with salt. After the final molding, the cheese is kept in brine for impregnation. Young suluguni is ready in 2 days, and aged - in 30-45 days.

This is a versatile cheese that can be eaten fresh, fried, smoked, added to salads, soups, omelettes, casseroles, pies, meat and vegetable dishes. Without suluguni, one cannot cook khachapuri, Ossetian pies and khychins. It is also a great appetizer for wine, especially if you serve cheese with tomatoes, bell peppers and herbs.

It's nice that Russian cheese makers produce analogues of the favorite cheeses. Thanks to this, we can expand our culinary horizons and have more fun with food!