Wednesday, July 31, 2013


The cheese room, Podere Campriano, February 2013. It's unheated and in the winter I wore five layers and three layers of socks and still shivered the whole time, with my toes going so numb my feet felt like pegs. After lifting the curds out of the immense caldaia, we put them in forms and placed them under a tarp filled with steam, which was so hot it burned my eyes. In the cheese room not a second was wasted--we were either stirring, cutting, putting curds in forms, or rinsing, washing, and mopping at all times. Claudio made a lot of cheese, from fresh, custardy ravaggiolo to piquant pecorino stagionato, but by far his most popular sale at the market is his ricotta, which would all be gone in an hour or two.

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