Canestrato Pugliese

Canestrato Pugliese is a hard, cooked-curd cheese made from whole sheep's milk and coagulated with lamb rennet paste. The wheels are cylinders with flat faces, weighing between seven and fourteen kilos, and the rind, dark yellow to brown and usually rubbed with olive oil, carries the imprint of the basket it was pressed in: irregular lines that shift and cross, because every canestro is woven by hand.

DOP status came in 1996. The protected zone is the whole province of Foggia plus part of the province of Bari, and the rules restrict production to the months from December to May. That is not an arbitrary window: it is the transhumance calendar, written into European law.

Minimum ageing is two months, but the cheese peaks between six and ten. Past a year it turns hard and grainy and the lamb rennet dominates; those wheels are for grating. The milk comes mostly from Gentile di Puglia ewes, the local merino cross, along with Altamurana and Leccese sheep.

It is genuinely rare. The dairies making certified DOP wheels number under a dozen, and annual certified output is measured in tens of tonnes. Most cheese sold as 'canestrato' in Italian markets is generic pecorino pressed in a ridged plastic mould.

Clean sheep's milk, dry hay and warm wool, with a lanolin edge that is characteristic of merino-type flocks. The first impression is savoury rather than salty, which surprises anyone who arrives expecting Pecorino Romano: the salt is roughly half.

At four to six months the paste is firm and sliceable, tasting of butter, toasted nuts and dry grass, with a faint bitterness at the finish that comes from the oiled rind. By ten months it is drier and starts to flake, and the lamb rennet delivers a slow piquancy that builds over several seconds instead of hitting at once.

The most useful way to place it: it sits between a mature Pecorino Toscano and a Pecorino Romano, with the eating quality of the first and the ageing capacity of the second. Old wheels develop crunchy tyrosine crystals and a long, faintly peppery finish that lingers well after the cheese is gone.

Young wheels, two to four months, belong on a board with Altamura bread, new olive oil and raw broad beans. This is also the cheese for 'ncapriata, the Pugliese purée of dried fava beans served with wild chicory, where a grating on top and a thread of oil finish the dish.

Aged, it grates with real character. On orecchiette with cime di rapa it does what generic pecorino does but with more depth and less salt. It works in baked pasta, in bread-and-cheese meatballs, and inside the filling of braciole simmered in tomato.

Shave it with a peeler over raw artichokes, fennel or spring broad beans. On chickpea, cicerchia and bean soups it holds its own against any Apennine pecorino.

Like all cooked-curd sheep cheeses it does not melt gracefully: it strings, then splits. Add it off the heat, or use it in the oven where it gratinates. When you substitute it into a recipe written for Pecorino Romano, remember to salt the dish: this cheese will not do it for you.

A hard sheep cheese wants cold and a little air, which a fridge does not naturally provide. Wrap the wedge in waxed cheese paper or parchment, then sit it loosely in a box in the salad drawer, and let it breathe: cling film pressed against the paste traps moisture and makes the surface slick and damp within a day. A young wedge holds two to three weeks that way; an aged one, a month or more, because there is less water in it to move.

The cheese keeps ageing in your fridge, only unevenly. The cut face dries and hardens into a pale rim, the paste behind it firms and the flavour concentrates and sharpens, and white tyrosine crystals appear through an older wheel as proteins break down, which is a marker of age rather than a fault. Vacuum sealed wedges hold longer and carry a date; once the seal is broken the clock restarts. Grated cheese dries within days; freezing works only in that grated form. For a wedge whose history you do not know, the date and the shop that cut it are the reference.

The rind gives it away: the wheel is drained in a woven reed basket, and the basket leaves a deep, regular pattern of ridges and diamonds pressed into the surface. A smooth rind means it was not made this way. Colour goes from straw gold on a young wheel to dark tobacco brown on an aged one, sometimes rubbed with oil. Cut, the paste is compact and straw to amber, close textured with a few small eyes, slightly granular under the knife, and it smells of lanolin and hay rather than of salt.

Several cheeses share the word canestrato, so read the label for Canestrato Pugliese DOP. Canestrato di Moliterno IGP is Basilicata, Canestrato Siciliano is often studded with black peppercorns, and basket cheese in an American Italian shop is usually a fresh, soft Easter cheese with nothing in common. The real comparison customers make is Pecorino Romano, which is bone white, far saltier and made for grating; the Pugliese is sweeter, nuttier and works on a board. Expect $22 to $34 a pound at a US counter, sold as a wedge from a large wheel.

Outside Puglia this is a specialist purchase, and the word 'canestrato' on its own is not a guarantee: it names a technique used from Sicily to Sardinia. Look for the full wording, Canestrato Pugliese DOP, plus the consortium mark.

In Italy, buy from cheese counters in Foggia, Bari and the Alta Murgia towns, or directly from the small dairies of the Subappennino Dauno. Expect EUR 14 to 22 per kilo at four to eight months, EUR 24 to 30 for wheels held to ten or twelve.

In the US, importers of southern Italian cheese carry it intermittently; ask at Italian specialists rather than expecting to find it in a supermarket, at roughly USD 16 to 26 per pound. Several cheeses labelled canestrato on American shelves are Sicilian or domestically made, so read the origin and not the name.

In the UK, Italian delicatessens and online importers list it at GBP 22 to 34 per kilo. Buy a piece cut from the wheel rather than a pre-packed vacuum wedge: the paste dries out and turns waxy under plastic.

At the counter, check the rind. Hand-woven rush leaves an uneven, shifting pattern; a plastic mould leaves a perfect grid.

Foggia is the historical centre, the city of the Dogana delle Pecore, the sheep customs office founded in 1447, which taxed every animal that came down the tratturo. Around it, the Subappennino Dauno towns of Lucera, Troia, Bovino and Sant'Agata di Puglia are where the small dairies and the farm shops are.

On the Gargano peninsula, between Monte Sant'Angelo, Vico del Gargano and the Foresta Umbra, sheep farming is still alive and cheese is sold at the farm.

Further south, the Alta Murgia between Altamura, Gravina in Puglia, Minervino Murge, Spinazzola and Poggiorsini is the landscape that explains this cheese best: stone steppe, dry-stone jazzi where the flocks were penned overnight, and Castel del Monte on the horizon. Altamura bread and canestrato come from the same ground and belong on the same table.

Go in spring. Wheels made in December and January hit four to six months around Easter, and the dairies still have a choice of ages to sell.