Scamorza

Scamorza starts exactly like mozzarella: cow's milk, rennet, curd ripened to the right acidity, then stretched in near-boiling water. The difference is what happens next. The stretched curd is shaped into a ball, tied with string about two thirds of the way up to make the little head, and hung in pairs over a pole to dry for seven to fifteen days.

That drying is the entire cheese. It loses around fifteen percent of its weight, develops a thin elastic straw-coloured skin, and concentrates in flavour and salt. Where fresh mozzarella weeps whey into whatever you cook it with, scamorza melts into long strands and stays put.

It comes white (bianca) or smoked (affumicata). Real smoking is done cold, under 30C, over damp straw or beechwood, and leaves an uneven hazel to amber skin. A great deal of industrial scamorza is instead dipped in smoke flavouring, which gives a suspiciously even mahogany colour and a flat, sweetish smoke.

Milkier and gentler than you expect from something that looks like a small smoked cheese. The white version tastes like a firmer, saltier mozzarella with a little more depth: clean milk, a touch of butter, a lactic finish. There is no sharpness and no funk at all.

The smoked version tastes of woodsmoke over that same mild milk. In good examples the milk is still clearly there under the smoke; in cheap ones the smoke is all you get, sweet and slightly artificial, like a smoked processed cheese slice.

Melted, both turn sweeter and stringier, with the browned edges going nutty. Grilled in thick slices it develops a crust and a molten centre, which is the best argument for the cheese.

The dish that explains the cheese is scamorza alla piastra. Cut slices a centimetre thick, put them on a screaming-hot dry pan or griddle with no fat at all, and leave them for about two minutes a side until a golden crust forms and the middle goes molten. Eat immediately, with black pepper, olive oil and bread.

On pizza, use it instead of or alongside fresh mozzarella when you want stringy melt without a wet centre. In baked pasta, lasagne and gratins it does the same job. On crostini it survives the broiler.

Use the smoked version with restraint. In a dish with several ingredients it will take over, so a common trick is to mix half smoked and half white. It goes best with things that can stand up to it: mushrooms, potatoes, sausage, roasted peppers, bitter greens.

A scamorza that has dried out too far in the fridge is not wasted: grate it into soup or over baked vegetables, where it behaves like a mild aged cheese.

It goes in the fridge wrapped in cheese paper or a clean tea towel, never in cling film pressed against it, because the skin has to breathe. In the vegetable drawer at 6 to 8 °C a whole one holds two to three weeks and dries slowly the entire time: it firms up, the salt concentrates and it drifts from a melting cheese towards a grating one. The smoked version holds a few days longer and passes its aroma to everything around it, so it belongs in a closed box.

Once cut, cover the cut face and expect that surface to harden first. A tacky film can appear on the skin as the cheese gives up whey, and a damp cloth takes it off; anything coloured growing on the surface is a question for the shop or the producer, not for guesswork. It freezes better than any other pasta filata, but only when it is headed for the oven: cube it, freeze the cubes spread on a tray, then bag them for up to two months and use without thawing.

The shape is a clean pear with a distinct little head above the string, and the surface is smooth and slightly glossy. Bianca is pale straw; the smoked version runs from hazel to dark amber, and a colour that is perfectly even and glassy usually points to an aromatised dip rather than time over smouldering straw. Press it: a whole one gives a little, like a soft tennis ball. Rock hard means it was dried too far and will not string in the pan; slack and wet means it was sold too young and is still closer to mozzarella. Cut it and the paste is white and compact with a faint leafy structure and no eyes, and it should peel into sheets when you pull it.

At a deli counter abroad the neighbours are smoked provolone, which is larger, aged longer and sharper, and caciocavallo, which is bigger again. Low moisture mozzarella has no head and comes as a block. If smoke completely buries the smell of milk, it was almost certainly added as flavouring.

In the US, Italian delis and cheese counters carry both bianca and affumicata; BelGioioso makes a domestic version sold widely, and importers such as Eataly and Murray's carry Abruzzese producers. Expect $8 to $14 per pound. Whole forms weigh 250 to 400 grams, which is one or two meals.

In the UK, scamorza is a deli and Italian-importer item rather than a supermarket one, though Ocado and Waitrose stock it intermittently at roughly £14 to £20 per kilo. Independent Italian shops in London and Manchester usually have both versions.

For the smoked one, look at the colour before the label: real cold smoking leaves an uneven hazel-to-amber skin, while a perfectly even glossy mahogany means a dip in smoke flavouring. The ingredient list will say 'aroma' or 'smoke flavouring' if that is what happened.

The Abruzzo highlands (Rivisondoli, Roccaraso, Pescocostanzo, Scanno) where dairies sell straight from the counter and every mountain restaurant grills it. In L'Aquila and its provincial markets you will see it hanging in pairs above the counter, which is how it is meant to be displayed.

In Molise, head for Agnone and Capracotta in the Alto Molise, where the same small dairies make scamorza and caciocavallo side by side.

In Rome the smoked version has become a trattoria staple, on crostini or melted into meatballs and baked pasta. Naples is provola country rather than scamorza country, but the family resemblance is obvious once you have eaten both.