Pecorino Romano

Pecorino Romano is made from whole sheep's milk, coagulated with lamb rennet paste, cooked in the vat and pressed into cylindrical wheels of 20 to 35 kilos. It is one of the oldest cheeses in continuous production in Europe: Columella described the method in the first century AD, and Roman legionaries carried a daily ration of it on campaign.

Two things make it what it is. The first is dry salting: coarse salt rubbed onto every wheel by hand, in waves, over eighty to a hundred days, which pushes the finished cheese to around 5% salt. The second is lamb rennet paste, which carries lipase enzymes that break down milk fat and produce the piquant, almost peppery bite that liquid rennet never gives.

Despite the name, roughly 95% of it is now made in Sardinia. The recipe is Roman; the sheep moved.

Salt first, always. Then a sharp, tangy piquancy that catches at the back of the throat, and underneath it the slightly gamey, lanolin-adjacent flavour of sheep's milk. There is very little sweetness and no nuttiness, the two things people expect if they arrive from Parmigiano Reggiano.

The texture is hard, dry and granular, breaking into flakes rather than slicing into ribbons. Eaten in a chunk it is punishing on its own and superb with honey, pears or raw broad beans. Grated into hot pasta it stops being a cheese and becomes seasoning.

A useful mental model: Parmigiano is savoury depth, Pecorino Romano is salt and edge. Recipes that call for one rarely want the other.

Buy a wedge and grate it yourself, as fine as you can. Pre-grated Pecorino Romano loses most of its aroma within days and behaves badly in sauce because of the anti-caking agents.

The cardinal rule is never to add it to a pan over direct heat. Sheep's milk protein tightens fast and the cheese will string, then seize into rubbery lumps. For cacio e pepe, take the pan off the heat, add pasta water that has stopped steaming hard, and work the cheese into a paste before the pasta goes anywhere near it. For carbonara, the cheese goes into the egg mixture, off the heat, always.

Because it is around 5% salt, treat it as seasoning and not as garnish: cut the salt everywhere else in the recipe, including the pasta water. Beyond pasta it is excellent shaved over raw artichokes and broad beans, folded into meatballs, or with honey and pears on a board. Keep the rind: dropped into a soup or a bean pot it releases flavour for an hour.

A wedge lives in the fridge, in the vegetable drawer, wrapped first in a lightly dampened cloth and then in waxed or greaseproof paper. Cling film against the surface makes it sweat and softens the rind. Handled that way it holds for two to three months, and across that time it keeps giving up water: it hardens, the salt concentrates, and it grates more finely than it did on the first day.

The cut face dries and turns glassy within a week or two, and scraping that surface back exposes the paste underneath. A dry white or green bloom on the rind can be wiped away with a cloth dipped in vinegar; anything damp, pink or black is a question for the cheesemonger or the producer rather than for guesswork. Grated cheese freezes for about six months in a rigid box but loses the finer aromatics, so freezing the wedge itself in 200 gram pieces gives a better result. Rinds keep in the freezer and go into soups.

The mark is on the rind and it is the first thing to check: a stylised sheep's head inside a diamond, repeated all the way round the side of the wheel alongside the words Pecorino Romano. It is pressed in with a matrix before salting, so it sits inside the rind instead of being printed on top. The paste is white to faintly straw coloured and compact, with few and irregular eyes, and it breaks into shards rather than bending into slices; a piece that flexes has not been aged long enough. On the nose there is a sharp, faintly sheepy note, and the salt arrives before the peppery finish does.

The trap outside Italy is the word Romano on its own. Domestic Romano, frequently cow's milk and made in Wisconsin or Argentina, is a different cheese at a much lower price. Locatelli, confusingly, is a genuine DOP brand. Pecorino Toscano is softer and milder, and Parmigiano is cow's milk with a grainy, nutty profile.

In the US, Pecorino Romano is one of the easiest Italian DOP cheeses to find: Costco, Whole Foods, Wegmans and most Italian delis carry Locatelli, Fulvi or Zerto. Locatelli is the market leader and is made in Sardinia; Fulvi is one of the few still made in Lazio and is noticeably less salty and more rounded. Expect $12-20 per pound, less at warehouse clubs.

In the UK, Waitrose, Ocado and Italian delicatessens stock it at roughly £18-28 per kilo. Some supermarkets label it simply 'Pecorino', so check for the DOP mark, since Pecorino Sardo and Toscano are quite different cheeses.

Whatever the source, look for the Consorzio's rind stencil: a stylised sheep's head inside a diamond, repeated all around the side of the wheel and impressed into the rind rather than printed on it. Buy a piece with rind attached, avoid anything pre-grated, and if there is a choice, ask for a wedge cut from a wheel that day.

Rome is the obvious pilgrimage. The trattorie of Testaccio, the neighbourhood built around the city's old slaughterhouse, still make cacio e pepe, gricia and carbonara with nothing but pecorino, pepper, pasta water and guanciale. Pigneto and Trastevere are close behind.

In Sardinia, the Marghine district around Macomer, Thiesi and Bortigali is the industrial heart of production, and several dairies run tours through the salting rooms. For long-aged wheels that never leave the island, the Barbagia around Nuoro and the Marmilla are where to ask.

In Lazio the DOP production is now small, but a handful of dairies in the Sabina hills and the Agro Pontino still work local milk, and their cheese is worth seeking out for the difference in salt alone.