This week I managed to escape the kitchen and fit in a quick trip to Italy: it’s just not fair that the boys always seem to have all the fun on their buying trips so we decided to go for ‘research’.
Yesterday we took my father-in-law’s 28-year-old Fiat 126 (which some people might call an old banger but I prefer to use the word ‘vintage’), for a run into the countryside to visit Caseficio Piandelmedico, one of our cheese suppliers.
This farm, home to 250 buffalos and numerous cows, is run by chief cheese-maker Giulia and her brother Antonio who takes care of the livestock. Together they produce an incredible range of buffalo milk cheeses and yoghurts as well as homemade jams and marmalades.
Their reputation is well-known throughout Le Marche as was evident by the huge number of customers that were packed into their shop while we were visiting. And that was only a normal Thursday afternoon: I can’t imagine what a weekend might look like. It took all my will power not to disappear into a corner with a pile of cheese and one of the demijohns of Verdicchio that lined the walls of the shop whilst waiting to meet Giulia for a chat!
Forever inventing and producing new kinds of cheese, Giulia is currently working on some ‘Formaggio di Fossa’, which involves leaving a 2-month old cheese to mature in underground holes for a further 3 months to produce a wonderfully earthy flavour. Hopefully, if they don’t sell out within a week as they did last year, we will have some available on the website in time for Christmas. In the meantime, as well as a range of flavoured cheese, why not try the spectacular Stilton-like ‘Dadoni di Bufala’, a flavourful blue cheese made with buffalo milk, just crying out to be spread onto warm crusty bread and washed down with some Rosso Piceno.
(Alison – Oct 16th)