Ragusano

Ragusano DOP is a semi-hard stretched-curd cheese made from raw cow's milk across the whole province of Ragusa plus three towns in Siracusa province: Noto, Palazzolo Acreide and Rosolini. It has been protected since 1996 and is the oldest documented cheese in Sicily.

The shape is unmistakable. It is a rectangular block with a square base, 43 to 53 centimetres long and 15 to 18 across, weighing between ten and sixteen kilos. The geometry comes from the process: the hot curd is pressed into a wooden form, then the cooled blocks are tied in pairs with plant-fibre cord and hung astride a beam, where they stay for months. Seen from the doorway of a farm store-room, those hanging rows resemble a staircase, hence scaluni.

The milk is raw and comes from cows grazing the Ibleo plateau, with the Modicana breed as the historic reference: a dark red, hardy, unproductive animal perfectly suited to thin, stony pasture. The rennet is paste rennet from lamb or kid, and that is a large part of why aged Ragusano develops a peppery bite that liquid-rennet cheeses never reach.

Minimum ageing is three months. At four to six months it is a table cheese, springy and sweet with a peppery finish; past a year it turns hard and flaky and becomes a grating cheese, standing in for pecorino across Sicilian cooking.

Young Ragusano tastes of grass and warm milk, with a buttery sweetness up front and a slow prickle of pepper at the back of the throat that arrives several seconds after you swallow. The texture is dense and slightly springy, layered rather than uniform: pull at a piece and it separates into thin sheets, the signature of stretched curd.

Aged past a year it becomes something else. The sweetness concentrates into a nutty, almost caramelised depth, the paste dries into brittle flakes like a young Parmigiano, and the lamb-rennet pepper moves from a background tingle to a defining feature. There are notes of hazelnut, hay, leather and, in the best raw-milk versions from spring milk, a distinct herbal edge that comes from the wild thyme and clover of the plateau.

What it is not is bland. Supermarket caciocavallo is mild and pleasant; Ragusano from a good dairy is closer in intensity to an aged Manchego.

At four to six months, treat it as a table cheese: break it into thick shards with a short, stout knife rather than slicing it thin, and eat it with durum wheat bread and olives. It is also the cheese for pane cunzatu, the Sicilian dressed loaf, with tomato, anchovy and oregano.

It griddles beautifully. Cut centimetre-thick slabs, put them in a dry, very hot pan, let a crust form on both sides, then finish with a splash of wine vinegar and dried oregano off the heat. That dish is home cooking across the Iblei. The same cheese goes inside scacce, the stuffed flatbreads of Ragusa and Modica, baked until the filling bubbles.

Past a year it becomes a grating cheese and takes pecorino's place: over pasta 'ncasciata, over macaroni with pork ragù, over baked aubergine. It is sweeter and less salty than Pecorino Romano, so you can be more generous with it.

One caveat worth stating: raw milk and lamb rennet mean the flavour survives cooking. This is not a neutral filler cheese. In a dish with delicate ingredients, measure it or it will take over.

It is a robust cheese and does not need a fridge if the house is cool: a cellar at 12 to 15°C (54 to 59°F) suits a large piece well. In a flat, use the least cold shelf of the fridge, wrapped in greaseproof paper or in a barely damp cotton cloth.

Never film pressed against the rind. The rind has to breathe, and under plastic moisture collects on it and surface growth follows. When the cut face dries and hardens, scrape off a millimetre and the paste behind it is unchanged. A half-kilo piece handled this way holds a good month; a hard grating piece runs three or four months, and what happens over that time is drying, nothing more dramatic.

White or greyish bloom on the rind comes off with a cloth dipped in vinegar, and if the rind cracks, rub it with a film of olive oil, the way they do in the ageing rooms. Grated cheese freezes in portions for cooking. A whole piece does not: on thawing the stretched curd flakes apart and loses its elasticity.

Shape is the first check and the simplest: if it is not a rectangular block on a square base, it is not Ragusano. Pear-shaped caciocavalli, cylinders and round wheels are something else, however Sicilian they may be.

The rind should carry the branded denomination mark and the cord lines, two parallel grooves left by the ropes, which stay visible for the life of the wheel. The rind itself is smooth, thin and compact, golden yellow when young and dark brown when old, often shiny with oil. Cut it and the paste is dense, ivory to straw yellow, with few holes or none at all. Young wheels show the layering of stretched curd, thin sheets that peel apart when you pull a piece; aged ones turn grainy and flake like a grana.

Young, it smells of milk, butter and fresh grass; aged, of dried fruit, leather and pasture, with the sharpness of kid rennet arriving before the taste does. Delis often sell any caciocavallo made in the province as ragusano: the place name means nothing here, the DOP mark does.

This is a specialist purchase everywhere outside Sicily. In the US, Italian importers and a handful of online specialists list it at roughly 22 to 34 dollars per pound, usually in the aged version, which travels better. In the UK, Italian delicatessens and cheese specialists carry it at about 28 to 42 pounds per kilo, though stock is intermittent.

In Sicily the young cheese runs 13 to 18 euros a kilo at the dairy and 16 to 22 in a gastronomia; aged over a year climbs to 22 to 30, and pure Modicana-breed production reaches 32 to 38.

Buy it cut from a whole block if you can: long-stored vacuum packs lose aroma and pick up a plastic note. Look for the branded DOP mark on the rind and the two parallel grooves left by the hanging cords, which never disappear, because plenty of generic pasta filata is made in the province, and a geographical name without the mark means nothing.

Ragusa Ibla and Modica are the obvious bases, and both are UNESCO baroque towns worth the trip regardless. The shops around Modica's San Giorgio staircase sell the cheese alongside the town's cold-worked chocolate, and most will cut from a whole block.

The real experience is inland. Working farms between Chiaramonte Gulfi, Giarratana and Monterosso Almo still use the wooden vat, and several take visitors first thing in the morning when the curd is stretched by hand in boiling water. Chiaramonte Gulfi is also the town of Monti Iblei DOP olive oil and of some serious pork cooking, which makes for a coherent day.

Vittoria, on the western edge of the province, is where the cheese meets Cerasuolo di Vittoria, Sicily's only DOCG wine. The weekly markets in Modica and Scicli are where the small producers sell. When you order, ask how many months: between a four-month Ragusano and a fourteen-month one the difference is not a matter of degree.