Raschera

Raschera DOP is a semi-hard cow's milk cheese made throughout the province of Cuneo in south-west Piedmont, protected since 1996. The specification allows small additions of sheep's or goat's milk, a leftover from the days when a mountain dairy milked whatever was in front of it.

The shape is its oddity, because there are two. The round version is a cylinder 30 to 40 centimetres across and 7 to 15 tall, weighing 5 to 9 kilos. The square version has sides of 28 to 40 centimetres, the same height and a similar weight. Same cheese, different mould, and the reason is logistical rather than culinary.

There is also an extra designation worth knowing: Raschera d'Alpeggio. Only cheese made and matured above 900 metres, in about fifteen named communes around Mondovì and the upper Tanaro valley, may carry it. It is a genuinely different cheese (mountain pasture milk, mountain microflora, far more aroma) and it is priced accordingly.

Minimum ageing is one month. At thirty to forty days it is sweet, soft and elastic; by three or four months the paste firms up, the flavour sharpens and a measured piquancy appears. The rennet is calf rennet.

Young Raschera is mild, buttery and clean, with a faint sourness like fresh cream and a texture that gives under the tooth without any squeak. It tastes of milk more than of anything else, which is not a criticism: this is a cheese built to be eaten in quantity with bread and polenta.

At three months it changes gear. The paste tightens, a nutty savouriness comes forward, and a light peppery bite develops on the finish: never as sharp as an aged pecorino, more like a suggestion of heat behind the salt.

The alpeggio version is where it gets interesting. Milk from cows grazing above 900 metres carries herbs and flowers straight into the cheese, and the flavour picks up hay, wild thyme and a mineral edge that the valley-floor version never has. Set the two side by side and the difference is not subtle.

The rind, thin and greyish-red with rust-coloured patches, smells of a cool stone cellar. It is edible, though most people trim it.

Young, eat it as it is at room temperature, with rye bread and cognà, the Piedmontese preserve of grape must, fruit and hazelnuts that is the standard partner for cheese in this province.

It melts exceptionally well and does not split, which makes it one of the most useful cooking cheeses in Piedmont. Use it in gnocchi alla bava in place of fontina, over polenta, in vegetable tarts, in cardoon and leek gratins. Melted very gently with a little milk it makes a lighter, less sweet alternative to a valdostana fonduta.

Aged past three months it can be grated over pasta and risotto, where it brings salt without the assertiveness of a hard grating cheese. Over tagliatelle with mushrooms, or a leek risotto, it is the local choice.

One dish from the valleys around Mondovì worth copying: boiled potatoes crushed with melted Raschera and a knob of butter, served very hot. It has no formal name and every household makes it.

A young Raschera holds a lot of water and that shortens its window: a wedge at a month old is good for about a week in the fridge, while a wedge aged past three months will go two to three weeks. Wrap the cut faces in cheese paper and leave the rind exposed, in the salad drawer, in a box that is closed but not airtight. Plastic film pressed on the paste gives you a wet, slippery surface within a day and a shut in smell.

Left alone, the wedge keeps maturing. Moisture leaves through the cut face first, so that face dulls, firms and forms a pale skin, while the paste behind loses its bounce and the taste moves from milky sweet towards salty and lightly peppery. The rind darkens. Bring it to room temperature for an hour before serving, since cold hides most of what a young Raschera has. Freezing a wedge is not worth it, because the eyes collapse and the paste crumbles on thawing; grated for cooking it survives two or three months. Go by the date on the wrapping.

Raschera comes in two shapes and the square one is the giveaway: a low rectangular block with straight sides, five to eight kilos, which almost no other Italian cheese uses. The round version exists too, seven to ten kilos. Both carry the DOP mark on the flat face, with the word Alpeggio added when the wheel was made above 900 metres. The rind is thin, smooth, greyish red to pale yellow, and the paste is white to ivory, elastic and fairly moist, with small eyes scattered unevenly through it.

On a counter abroad it stands among cheeses it resembles. Toma Piemontese is rounder in shape and usually milder; Fontina is fattier and more aromatic; Bra, Montasio and Asiago all occupy similar territory and are frequently offered as substitutes. Ask for the age, because Raschera changes a great deal: a month old wheel is mild, milky and springy, while past three months it turns firmer, saltier and faintly peppery. The Alpeggio version is the more expensive and more assertive. Prices abroad sit at $18 to $30 a pound, and it is normally cut from the block to order.

In Cuneo province Raschera costs 11 to 16 euros a kilo at the dairy and 14 to 19 in a shop. Raschera d'Alpeggio is another matter: 18 to 28 euros a kilo, and more when supply is short.

Elsewhere in Italy expect 18 to 26 euros a kilo. In the US a small number of importers list it at 16 to 28 dollars per pound; in the UK, 22 to 34 pounds per kilo from cheesemongers who work with northern Italy.

Annual production runs to a few hundred thousand wheels, of which alpeggio is a tiny fraction: a few thousand wheels made only during the summer grazing season between June and September.

Spend the difference at least once. Between a valley-floor Raschera and an alpeggio wheel from the same dairy at the same age, the gap is the difference between a good cheese and a cheese that tells you where it came from. Check the rind for the DOP mark and, on mountain wheels, the alpeggio wording.

Mondovì is the base. The lower town and Mondovì Piazza on the hill above it, linked by a funicular, have old-fashioned shops that stock Raschera from several dairies and cut to order. A few kilometres away, the sanctuary at Vicoforte has the largest elliptical dome in the world, and you can climb inside it.

Head up towards Monte Mongioie and you are in alpeggio country: Frabosa Soprana and Sottana, Roburent, Pamparato, the Casotto and Corsaglia valleys. In summer several high dairies make cheese on the pasture and sell at the door; in winter the same valleys are small, unglamorous ski areas.

Ormea and Garessio, in the upper Tanaro valley, form the other side of the alpeggio zone, with a chestnut and cheese tradition worth the drive.

In September of odd-numbered years, Bra hosts Cheese, Slow Food's cheese fair. It is the fastest way to understand this province: Raschera, Castelmagno, Bra, Murazzano and Toma Piemontese, side by side, in one afternoon.