Taleggio

Taleggio is a soft, washed-rind cheese made from whole cow's milk, shaped into squares of about 18 to 20 centimetres a side and 4 to 7 centimetres deep, weighing roughly two kilos. The shape is functional rather than decorative: a flat square gives a lot of surface relative to volume, and in a washed-rind cheese ripening travels inwards from the rind.

It belongs to the stracchino family (cheeses made in Lombardy from the milk of cows tired, stracche, after coming down from summer pasture) and was known for centuries as stracchino quadro. The name Taleggio, from the Val Taleggio in the Bergamo Alps, only took hold in the twentieth century.

During ripening the rind is sponged weekly with brine. That washing encourages Brevibacterium linens on the surface, which produces both the powerful smell and the enzymes that soften the paste into a runny ring beneath the rind.

This is the classic case of a cheese that smells much stronger than it tastes. The aroma is barnyard and cellar and, honestly, feet: the same bacterium is at work on both. The flavour is mild by comparison: milky and buttery up front, then a fruity tang, a hint of hazelnut, and a light salty finish. There is none of the aggression the smell promises.

Texture is the other half of the appeal. A well-ripened Taleggio has an almost liquid layer just under the rind and a firmer, faintly chalky centre. Young wheels are more uniform and mild; at sixty or seventy days the whole paste goes yielding and the fruitiness deepens.

Melted, it turns silky and even-textured, without the elastic stretch of mozzarella or the graininess of a hard cheese.

Taleggio is a melting cheese first. Cube it and stir it into polenta off the heat, fold it through a risotto at the mantecatura, lay it over a pizza in place of mozzarella, or melt it over roasted asparagus, potatoes or radicchio. It goes smooth and even rather than stringy, which is why Italian cooks reach for it in gratins.

One rule: add it with the heat off. Above about 70°C the fat separates and the cheese turns oily. And use it alone, because its aroma overwhelms almost any cheese you blend it with.

On a board, serve it at room temperature, rind on if you like the intensity. Rye bread, chestnut honey, walnuts and pear mostarda are the traditional Lombard partners. It also makes an outstanding toasted sandwich with prosciutto cotto and a little mustard.

Keep it in the fridge at 4 to 6°C, and if there is a vegetable drawer use it, because the higher humidity there stops the rind drying out. Wrap it in the two-layer cheese paper it came in, or in baking paper with a loose sheet of foil outside; do not press cling film onto the rind, which seals the surface, traps moisture and makes the paste sweat. A cut wedge holds a week or two, an uncut wheel several weeks, and the producer date is the reference for both.

It keeps changing in the fridge, which is the point of a washed rind cheese. The rind deepens in colour and puts out more white and grey bloom, the soft band under the rind widens as it works inwards, the chalky core shrinks and eventually disappears, and the smell gains an ammoniacal edge as the proteins break down further. A cut face left open dries into a firm skin and the edges harden. Freezing turns the paste crumbly and grainy on thawing, so it only makes sense for cooking.

Taleggio is square, roughly 20cm on a side and 5 to 7cm high, and a whole wheel weighs about two kilos, so what you see at a counter is usually a wedge cut from that square. The consortium mark is pressed into the rind as four circles, each carrying a stylised T and the wheel number, and a wedge should still show part of it. The rind itself is thin, pink-orange with grey and white bloom. Inside, the paste is ivory, noticeably softer in the band just under the rind and firmer towards the centre when young. It smells far stronger than it tastes.

What gets sold alongside it: Taleggio style squares made in the United States and elsewhere, which cannot use the DOP name; Quadrello di Bufala, a buffalo milk square of similar shape; and Stracchino or Crescenza, which come from the same tradition but are fresh and rindless. Bloomy rind cheeses like brie have a white fuzzy rind, not an orange washed one. Reckon on 12 to 18 euro a kilo in Italy, £3 to £5 for a 200g wedge, $18 to $28 a pound.

In the US, Taleggio is one of the more widely distributed Italian soft cheeses: Whole Foods, Wegmans, Central Market and Italian delis carry it, as do online sellers like Murray's, Eataly and iGourmet. Expect $12-20 per pound. Most imported wheels are pasteurised, since raw-milk versions under 60 days cannot legally enter the US.

In the UK, Waitrose, Ocado, Neal's Yard Dairy and Italian delicatessens stock it at roughly £18-30 per kilo, with raw-milk wheels available at specialist cheesemongers.

Check the flat face for the Consorzio mark: four circles in a row, three carrying the letter T and one carrying the dairy's number, impressed into the rind. Buy a cut piece rather than a pre-wrapped one where you can, and ask when it was cut, because Taleggio does not improve in cling film. A slightly damp, pinkish rind with grey-green mould patches is correct; a sticky, slimy rind or an ammonia smell running into the paste is not.

The Val Taleggio itself, an hour north of Bergamo between the Valsassina and the Val Brembana, is where the cheese was born, and a handful of dairies around Vedeseta and Taleggio still ripen in natural caves cut into the rock. Several take visitors by appointment, and the difference from cellar-aged wheels is obvious in the rind.

Bergamo Alta, the walled upper town, has cheese shops carrying ageings that never reach supermarkets, and hosts Forme every September, a festival dedicated to the DOP cheeses of the Orobie Alps.

For Taleggio in its natural context, the mountain huts and rifugi of the Orobie serve it melted over polenta taragna from October onwards, which is the single best way to eat it.