Tag: cheese
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Making Cheese In The Sicilian Countryside
Today during our Myths & Mysteries of Sicily tour we had a fabulous day in the countryside of Palazzo Acreide at a farm making cheese and cooking our Sunday lunch with Alessia of Smile and Food.
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Primo Sale, Before Salt
Preparing the primo sale sheep’s milk cheese for aging…
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Baskets for Heaven
Sheep herding and cheese making has been part of life in Sicily for centuries. The baskets pictured were used for making, molding, and aging sheep milk cheeses such as pecorino, primo sale, and ricotta before modern health codes required plastic imitations to be adopted.
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You Ricotta Me at Hello
I’ve got ricotta on my mind… Partially because this weekend in Vizzini (Catania province), the home of the writer Giovanni Verga, they are celebrating the 43rd Ricotta and Knowledge Festival.
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Sicily’s Rare Goat, the Capra Girgentana
Distinguished by their spiral, tall horns and long hair, this rare breed of goat, called capra girgentana, is valuable for its milk that possesses an equal amount of fat to protein. The name girgentana recalls the old Sicilian name of the city of Agrigento, Girgenti. During the mid-twentieth century, throughout southwestern Sicily, girgentana goats numbered…
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Cheese in Its Cave
Pecorino cheese aging in Salemi, Trapani province
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Savoring Sicily, Day 3: Bread and Cheese Fill Us with Joy
We started Day 3 of our Savoring Sicily tour with a visit to a cheese farm where we ate vastedda DOP cheese as they were making it (Same farm as the other day. I can’t say enough about our hosts Salvatore and Baldo!). Vastedda is like mozzarella, but made with sheep’s milk and a slightly…
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Stirring Sicily, Day 7: Sheep to Me with Love
This morning, we started our final day of Experience Sicily’s Stirring Sicily trip (in cooperation with Zest and GoSicily with help from Gelsomino Imports) with a visit to a sheep farm in Salemi. Five generations have raised sheep here, where they milk the animals and produce DOP status cheeses. They follow strict guidelines and raise…
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A Tisket, A Tasket
In past years before plastic was employed, hand-woven reed baskets like these pictured were used to store and age ricotta, ricotta salata, and other cheeses.