Valtellina Casera

Valtellina Casera DOP is a semi-cooked cheese made from partially skimmed cow's milk throughout the province of Sondrio, in the Alps of northern Lombardy. It was protected in 1996 alongside Bitto, with which it shares a consortium.

The wheel is a cylinder with flat faces and straight or barely convex sides: 30 to 45 centimetres across, 8 to 10 tall, weighing 7 to 12 kilos. The rind is thin and straw-coloured, darkening with age.

The milk comes from two or more milkings and is partially skimmed by settling: the milk stands in shallow vats, the cream rises, it is removed and turned into butter. This was never a dietary decision. In the mountains butter was the cash crop, and cheese was made from what was left over.

Minimum ageing is 70 days. At three months Casera is sweet and elastic with a light acidity; by eight or ten months the paste dries, the flavour concentrates and a clear savoury edge appears. The rennet is calf rennet.

Clean, milky and gently sour at three months, with a springy paste and an aroma of butter and cool stone. Because the cream has been taken off, it is noticeably leaner on the palate than Fontina or a whole-milk alpine cheese: less coating, more clarity, and a lactic tang that the fattier cheeses smother.

With age it turns nutty and savoury. Around six months there is hazelnut and browned butter; past ten months the paste goes slightly granular, the salt comes forward and a mild peppery finish develops. It never becomes aggressive.

The texture is the giveaway of a semi-cooked, pressed curd: elastic enough to bend a slice without cracking, firm enough to cut cleanly, with small sparse eyes scattered unevenly through the paste.

If you have eaten pizzoccheri, you already know the taste: that faintly sour, savoury note running between the cabbage and the potato is Casera, and no other cheese does it the same way.

Casera is the cheese for pizzoccheri, and that alone would justify it. Teglio's buckwheat tagliatelle are layered with cabbage or chard, potatoes, butter melted with garlic, and generous shavings of Casera that melt between the boiling-hot layers without turning stringy.

It is also the cheese inside sciatt, the buckwheat fritters with a molten centre served on a bed of chicory in Chiavenna and throughout the valley, and it goes into polenta taragna, stirred hard into buckwheat polenta until the whole pot turns glossy.

On its own, at three or four months, it is a good table cheese: thick slices with rye bread and the valley's own bresaola. Aged past eight months it can be grated, with a gentler saltiness than a hard grating cheese.

One technical point: because the milk is skimmed, Casera melts well but gives up less fat than Fontina. Any recipe that wants creaminess needs a knob of butter alongside, which is exactly what the pizzoccheri recipe does.

Keep the rind on the wedge and let it work. Wrap the cut faces in cheese paper, or parchment inside a loosely closed bag, so the rind still has air, and put it in the salad drawer. Never press cling film against the paste, which within a day leaves the surface damp and slick. A young Casera of two or three months holds ten days to two weeks; a wedge aged eight months or more, three to four weeks, because there is less water left to move.

Semi skimmed paste dries faster than a fatty one, so the cut face is where you will see the change: it pales, hardens into a rim and eventually cracks, while the paste behind it stiffens and the flavour turns from milky towards nutty and slightly bitter. Older wedges throw white tyrosine crystals, a sign of protein breakdown with age. Take it out of the fridge an hour before eating. Grated Casera can be frozen for cooking, but a wedge frozen whole thaws crumbly. The date and the counter that cut it are the reference.

Look at the heel of the wheel: a DOP Casera has CASERA branded around the side in repeating letters, plus the consortium mark and a casein plate with the dairy number. The rind is thin, smooth and straw yellow to grey brown, not waxed. Cut, the paste is compact and elastic, white to straw depending on season, with sparse small irregular eyes and a slightly rubbery give under the thumb. It smells of milk and hay, mild rather than barnyard, and it is less fatty than a whole milk mountain cheese.

Abroad it usually sits beside Fontina, and the two get swapped constantly. Fontina is whole milk, softer, fattier and more aromatic; Casera is semi skimmed, firmer and drier, which is exactly why it melts without going stringy in pizzoccheri. Do not confuse it with Bitto DOP either, the other Valtellina cheese, which is made only from summer alpine milk, aged far longer and priced several times higher. Age matters more than brand here: ask for seventy days to four months for the table, eight months and up for grating. Expect $18 to $30 a pound.

In Valtellina it costs 12 to 17 euros a kilo at the dairy and 15 to 20 in a shop, rising to 20 to 26 for wheels aged past ten months. Elsewhere in Italy expect 18 to 26 euros a kilo.

In the US, Italian importers list it at roughly 16 to 28 dollars per pound; in the UK, 22 to 34 pounds per kilo, often on the same counter as bresaola from the same valley. Production runs to well over a hundred thousand wheels a year, so this is a solid DOP rather than a rarity, and it is easier to find abroad than most alpine Italian cheeses.

For pizzoccheri, buy a piece aged four to six months: savoury enough to be noticed between the cabbage and the potato, soft enough to melt properly. Heavily aged wheels are better on a board and stay grainy in the pan.

At the counter, check the branded mark on the rind and look at the sides of the wheel. Straight sides mean Casera; sides that curve inward mean Bitto, a different cheese at a very different price.

Teglio, halfway up the valley, is the home of pizzoccheri, where a local academy guards the recipe and the restaurants serve them all year. The frescoed Renaissance Palazzo Besta is reason enough to stop even without an appetite.

Morbegno, lower down, has hosted the area's historic cheese show for more than a century; in October it brings together Casera, Bitto and the summer alpine production of the Val Gerola. It is the best single occasion for tasting across the range.

Chiavenna, in the side valley to the west, has the crotti: natural cavities in the rockfall where a constant cold draught called the sorel keeps the temperature steady all year. They have been cellars for centuries and taverns for almost as long, and sciatt are what you eat in them.

Sondrio is the logistical base, with the protection consortium and shops that keep the long-aged wheels. From there you can climb into the Valmalenco and Val Masino towards the summer pastures, or drop down to the terraced Nebbiolo vineyards of Sassella and Inferno, where the dry-stone walls are as protected as the cheese.