Caciocavallo

Caciocavallo is a pasta filata cheese: the curd is plunged into near-boiling water and stretched by hand until it turns glossy and elastic, exactly as it is for mozzarella. What separates the two is everything that happens next. Mozzarella is eaten within days; caciocavallo is brined, tied in pairs and hung to age for anything from one month to four years, and in that time it turns firm, sharp and deeply savoury.

The shape is the giveaway: a teardrop or gourd body pinched near the top into a small round head. That pinch existed for a practical reason: two cheeses were tied together with cord and slung astride a beam to dry, and 'a cavallo', astride or on horseback, is the most credible origin of the name. There is no horse milk involved, despite what half the internet says.

Since 1993 the name Caciocavallo Silano has been protected as a DOP covering five southern regions. Outside the DOP there is a whole world of local caciocavalli, including the extraordinary Caciocavallo Podolico made from the milk of a rare grazing breed.

Young caciocavallo, at one to three months, is mild, milky and faintly tangy, with a springy texture close to a good young provolone or a firm mozzarella that has lost its water. Nothing aggressive, but a clean lactic sweetness that keeps you going back.

At six months to a year it changes character completely: the paste tightens, the salt comes forward and you get butter, toasted hazelnut and a slow, building sharpness at the back of the palate. If the maker used kid rennet, that sharpness turns properly piccante: the same pepperiness you find in aged provolone piccante, but rounder.

Caciocavallo Podolico aged two years or more is in another category altogether: candied citrus peel, dried hay, brown butter, sometimes a whiff of woodsmoke, with tyrosine crystals crunching between the teeth. It is one of the great cheeses of Europe and almost nobody outside Italy has heard of it.

Young caciocavallo is a melting cheese. Slice it thin over a baked pasta, layer it into an aubergine parmigiana, put it in a toasted sandwich, or scatter it over roast potatoes for the last ten minutes. It melts smoothly and stringily without splitting into oil, which is more than can be said for a lot of aged cheeses.

The best single thing you can do with a semi-aged piece takes three minutes: cut slices a centimetre thick, put them in a dry non-stick pan over high heat, and let each side form a lacquered brown crust while the inside goes molten. Eat with bread and a spoonful of chilli honey. This is the dish that converts people.

Aged over a year, treat it as you would pecorino: grate it over pasta with a rich meat ragù, over bean and chicory soups, over cavatelli with broccoli rabe. It is less salty than pecorino romano, so you can use more of it.

Whole small wheels can be grilled the Basilicata way: caciocavallo impiccato, literally 'hanged caciocavallo'. Suspend it on a hook above embers, turn it constantly, and catch the melting edge on slices of bread as it drips.

Keep a cut piece in the least cold part of the refrigerator, the vegetable drawer, wrapped in cheese paper or a clean cotton cloth. Plastic film pressed on the surface is the thing to avoid: stretched curd holds a lot of water, and sealed against the film it sweats and turns strong. A young caciocavallo is a two-week piece once cut; an aged one holds a month. A whole uncut form is a different proposition and keeps for months hanging in a cool cellar at 12 to 15 degrees with decent humidity, which is how the cheese was designed to be kept, and it goes on ageing there.

What happens in the meantime is water leaving. The paste hardens, the flavour concentrates and grows sharper, and the texture shifts from elastic to flaky. The cut face dries first, darkening into a firm edge that gets trimmed off before slicing, and a rind that dries out can be wiped with a lightly oiled cloth. Freezing costs a young cheese its stretch, so it suits only the hard aged kind, and then already grated. Dates belong to the label and the dairy.

Start with the shape. A caciocavallo is an oval or pear-shaped body with a clean waist and a small round head on top, still carrying the groove left by the cord it hung from. A wheel or a plain ball is something else stretched from the same curd. The rind should be thin, smooth and even, pale straw when young and amber to hazel with age, slightly oily on older pieces and creased where the paste was pulled. Cut across, the paste is compact and near enough eyeless, ivory to straw, flaking a little in aged pieces; a deep buttery yellow points to pasture milk, and Podolico can reach ochre. Caciocavallo Silano DOP is fire-branded on the body with its dairy code.

Provolone is the usual confusion abroad: also stretched curd, but far larger, cylindrical or torpedo-shaped, often smoked or made piccante with lipase. Scamorza is the young, soft, small relative, ragusano the Sicilian rectangular block, and American and Argentine cheeses sold under the name are their own thing. It should smell of cooked milk, butter and hay. Expect 12 to 20 dollars a pound at an Italian deli.

In the US, look in Italian delis and any well-stocked cheese counter: Eataly, Di Bruno Bros, Murray's and Zabar's all carry it, and Buon'Italia and Gustiamo ship the Silano DOP nationwide. Expect roughly 14 to 22 dollars per pound for a good aged Silano, and 40 dollars a pound or more for Podolico when it appears at all.

In the UK, Italian delicatessens and online importers such as Natoora and Ham & Cheese Co. list it, and it turns up in the cheese rooms of larger Waitrose branches. Prices run about £22 to £38 per kilo for Silano DOP.

What to check: the DOP is fire-branded onto the rind of the Caciocavallo Silano, along with the dairy's code. If a shop sells you a rindless block labelled simply 'caciocavallo', it may well be a generic pasta filata with no connection to the protected cheese. Ask for the age too, because 'caciocavallo' unqualified usually means young, and young is not what most recipes want.

Basilicata is the heartland for eating it rather than buying it. Matera's restaurants and bakeries pair it with peperoni cruschi and the local sourdough bread; the villages of the Pollino and the Val d'Agri run summer festivals built around caciocavallo impiccato over open fires.

Calabria's Sila plateau is where the DOP takes its name. San Giovanni in Fiore, Camigliatello Silano and Acri still have dairies working milk from herds that summer on the high pastures, and most of them will let you taste before buying.

For Podolico, head to the Gargano promontory in Puglia, the Cilento in Campania, or inland Irpinia: the villages around Castel del Monte in Abruzzo and Bagnoli Irpino are where the best-aged wheels stay local. In Naples, the historic cheese shops of the Pignasecca market keep a rotating stock of southern caciocavalli worth a detour.