NYT: Pulling Together Real Stracciatella

Wednesday, August 15 2012

NYT: Pulling Together Real Stracciatella

In the New York Times, a piece about the stretchy, delicious cheese known as Straciatella, made by Caputo’s Brothers in Pennsylvania:

The Caputos, who are in their 30s, spent years perfecting their pasta filata, or stretched-curd cheeses, before opening Caputo Brothers Creamery in Spring Grove, Pa., in 2011. While it would have been easy to sell the familiar mozzarella and its fashionable and very profitable cousin, burrata, Ms. Caputo is on a quest to crown stracciatella the new “it” cheese: one that provides the wow factor of burrata, but is far easier (and less expensive) to make.

“People need to eat this cheese,” Ms. Caputo said. “It just” — she paused, searching for words — “changes you.”

Ms. Caputo’s own love affair with stracciatella began six years ago, when she was a newlywed herself. She was an information-technology manager; her husband was selling pharmaceuticals, but harbored dreams of becoming a chef.

With plans to open a restaurant, the couple quit their jobs and enrolled in an intensive culinary program in Calabria, the toe of the Italian boot. There, they learned to make pasta, salumi and, of course, southern Italy’s famous stretched curd cheeses.

Stracciatella (pronounced strahtch-ah- TELL-ah), like so many peasant foods, was born as a clever way to use leftovers, in this case the odd bits that remain after mozzarella is stretched. Cheesemakers in Puglia, where the cheese originates, used the excess (and even mozzarella unsold the day before), stretching them into long ropes. They then tore those into thin strands and bathed them in cream. (The Italian verb stracciare means “to tear apart,” which is why the name is also used for the classic Roman soup with shreds of egg, and vanilla gelato laced with shavings of chocolate.) Stracciatella was served just like that, or stuffed inside new balls of mozzarella and called burrata.

You can find Caputo’s cheeses and curds (for making your own Mozzarella, Straciatella, etc) at Murray’s Cheese and Saxelby Cheesemongers, and Saxelby’s even offers classes, taught by the Caputos, in how to make these cheeses and more!

Read the full article here.