CheeseForum.org » Forum

CHEESE TYPE BOARDS (for Cheese Lovers and Cheese Makers) => SECONDARY COAGULATION (Usually Recooked) - Primarily Whey Based => Topic started by: Cheese Head on July 04, 2009, 04:56:42 PM

Title: Ricotta Salata Stagionato Picture @ Pienza, Tuscany, Italy Formaggio Store
Post by: Cheese Head on July 04, 2009, 04:56:42 PM

While recently on holiday in Italy, took several pictures of cheeses including this one of expensive Ricotta Salata Stagionato in small hilltop fortress town called Pienza in Tuscany.

It is the strangest looking Ricotta I have ever seen, stagionato means aged, found the following info on internet:

• Wikipedia: Ricotta Salata is a pressed, salted and dried variety of ricotta salata. A milky-white hard cheese used for grating or shaving, ricotta salata is sold in wheels, decorated by a delicate basket-weave pattern
• A G Ferrari Store: Ricotta Salata is one of Italy's most unusual and least understood sheep's milk cheeses. The milk curds and whey used to make this cheese are pressed and dried even before the cheese is aged, giving this pure white cheese a dense but slightly spongy texture and a salty, milky flavor -- like a dry Italian feta. Despite its name, this is not ricotta as Americans have come to know ricotta. In Italian, ricotta simply means ""recooked."" It is a cheese-making process rather than a specific cheese. This ricotta is also a salata, or ""salted,"" cheese. Sicily, because of its abundance of sheep, is justifiably famous for its sheep's milk cheeses.
  

Click on picture to get full size image, all the cheese pictures from Pienza stores posted on website (http://cheeseforum.org/Gallery/Gallery.htm).

Title: Re: Ricotta Salata Stagionato Picture @ Pienza, Tuscany, Italy Formaggio Store
Post by: DeejayDebi on July 20, 2009, 03:08:30 AM

They look like they were hung in sausage casings!  ;D