Quartirolo Lombardo

Quartirolo Lombardo is an uncooked cow's milk cheese made across most of Lombardy: the provinces of Bergamo, Brescia, Como, Cremona, Lecco, Lodi, Milan, Monza e Brianza, Pavia and Varese. The shape is a flat square block, 18 to 22 centimetres a side and only 4 to 8 centimetres tall, weighing 1.5 to 3.5 kilos. It has been DOP since 1996.

It belongs to the stracchino family: Lombard cheeses made from the milk of cows tired (stracche) by the seasonal move between the plain and the high pastures. Taleggio, Salva Cremasco and crescenza come from the same root.

The specification recognises two types, and they are best treated as two cheeses. Fresh Quartirolo is sold between five and thirty days old: a barely-there white rind, a chalk-white paste that crumbles rather than bends, a clean lactic acidity and a smell of yoghurt. Aged Quartirolo, past thirty days and often reaching two months, has a thicker pink-brown rind, a paste that yellows slightly and softens under the rind, and a deeper, faintly pungent aroma.

It is one of Lombardy's best-selling cheeses at home and one of its least exported, which is why it is a supermarket staple in Milan and effectively unknown in London or New York.

Fresh Quartirolo tastes like a firm, mild yoghurt made solid: clean milk, a distinct lactic tang, a faint lemon note, and a texture that crumbles under the knife instead of stretching. It is refreshing rather than rich, and the acidity is the point. Think of a young feta with the salt removed and the sourness softened, or of a fresh farmer's cheese with better structure.

Aged Quartirolo is a different animal. The lactic tang recedes, the paste under the rind softens toward creaminess, and the flavour becomes savoury and mushroomy with a peppery lift at the end. It is still nowhere near the intensity of Taleggio or a washed-rind cheese and it stays polite, but it acquires depth and a longer finish.

What neither version is: rubbery, bland or aggressive. If a piece squeaks against your teeth or stretches, you have something else. The crumble is the signature, and it comes from breaking the curd twice.

Fresh Quartirolo is best eaten as it is, at room temperature, with olive oil, black pepper and good bread. It takes well to mostarda, acacia honey and ripe fruit, and crumbled over a tomato and basil salad it behaves like a sweeter, gentler feta.

In cooking it appears throughout everyday Lombard food: in vegetable tarts, in pumpkin tortelli filling, melted over polenta, stirred into risotto at the end. It melts creamily but keeps a slight grain, which in a risotto is an advantage rather than a fault.

Aged Quartirolo shifts to the board, with mostarda and rye bread, and in cooking you need less of it, because the aroma carries further.

One rule for both: never boil it. This is an acidic, uncooked curd, and at high heat it splits into whey and curds. Add it off the flame and stir. And take it out of the fridge half an hour early; cold, the fresh version in particular says almost nothing.

Quartirolo carries a lot of water and behaves like a soft cheese throughout. A vacuum-sealed piece keeps at 4 to 6 C until the date on the pack, set by the dairy. Once open, wrap it in waxed paper and put it in a box that is not sealed tight, in the vegetable drawer, and stand it on paper or a small rack rather than letting it sit in the whey it releases. Cling film against the paste is the one thing to avoid, since it traps that moisture and a slick film forms on the surface within a day or two.

The fresh type holds about one to two weeks in the fridge, the aged type longer, and both keep changing while they sit. The paste softens progressively inward from the rind, the crumbly core turns waxy and then creamy, the acid lactic note gives way to something fuller and more mushroomy, and the rind darkens from white toward pink-grey. Freezing does not work here: the free water tears the structure, and it thaws grainy and watery with liquid pooling in the wrapper.

It is a square, and a low one: roughly eighteen to twenty-two centimetres across, four to eight high, with straight sides and flat faces carrying the stamped Quartirolo Lombardo DOP mark. The rind is very thin, white to pale pink on the fresh version and grey-pink on the aged one. Cut a fresh wheel and the paste is chalk white and crumbly, breaking under the knife rather than slicing clean, with a lactic and faintly sour smell. An aged one softens from the rind inward, so the outer centimetre turns waxy and creamy while the core stays firm.

Taleggio is the cheese it gets shelved beside and mistaken for: also square and Lombard, but bigger, taller, washed to an orange rind and far more pungent. Stracchino and crescenza come in tubs with no rind at all and are spreadable. Robiola is smaller and rounder. Crumbly white cheeses on foreign counters, feta and queso fresco among them, are brined and salty in a way this is not. It is uncommon outside Italy and priced as a specialist import.

Outside Italy this is a specialist purchase, which is odd for a cheese that fills supermarket counters in Milan. In the US, Italian delis and importers list it occasionally at roughly 12 to 20 dollars per pound; in the UK, Italian delicatessens carry it at about 16 to 26 pounds per kilo. Neither market stocks it reliably, and the fresh version travels particularly badly.

If you find only the aged version abroad, that is normal: it survives the journey. For fresh Quartirolo, ask the date of production rather than the sell-by date. At ten days it is bright, chalky and clean; at twenty-five it is already softening and turning. Both are legitimate, but they are not the same experience.

In Lombardy the price is 9 to 14 euros a kilo for fresh and 13 to 18 for aged, with raw-milk artisan production above 20. Buy from a local dairy rather than a national brand where you can: the price gap is small and the difference in flavour is not.

At the counter, check the height. A square Lombard cheese 4 to 8 centimetres tall is Quartirolo; at 9 to 15 it is Salva Cremasco, a different DOP at a different price.

Brianza, the hilly belt between Milan, Como and Lecco, is the historic heartland, and village dairies still make it. In the weekly markets it sits alongside mascarpone and crescenza. The Lodi plain and the lower Bergamo province are the other two production basins, with Treviglio as the natural hub.

Milan is the easiest place to eat it, and the most honest: this is a cheese Milanese households buy without thinking. Any covered market or neighbourhood gastronomia will have both versions, and you can taste them side by side for the price of a coffee.

In Bergamo, the shops of the Città Alta stock Quartirolo alongside the province's other protected cheeses (there are nine, more than in any other province in Europe) and in October the Forme festival brings them all into the squares.

For the version closest to the original, go to the Val Brembana or the Valsassina between September and November, when the herds have come down from the summer pastures and dairies make Quartirolo from that autumn milk. It is the one time of year the name means what it says.