Italian food Archives - Set Your Own Scene

One of the joys of living in Italy – even during the periods of lockdown – has been discovering local ingredients that are specific to particular regions. Edible weeds such as cicoria, cima di rapa and puntarelle in Puglia and the Salento; ‘nduja, soppressata and Tropea onions in Calabria and the crispy red peperoni cruschi of the Basilicata region, to name just a few.

A few weeks ago, I popped my head into my local casa vinicola, Vecchio Feudo on Corso Sidney Sonnino in Bari to pick up some essentials (well, olives, taralli and white wine), when a product I hadn’t seen before caught my eye as I was paying at the counter. A small glass jar in the chiller filled with a white paste was labelled ‘Ricotta forte’ (‘strong ricotta’). My interest was piqued and at €2.50 it was cheap enough to take a punt on.

A typical jar of Pugliese ricotta forte and Vecchio Feudo on Corso Sidney Sonnino in Madonnella, Bari.

I took the jar back to my flat, unscrewed the lid and a smell unlike anything else I can remember immediately hit me. It was pungent to say the least and made gorgonzola seem like Dairylea in comparison. I tentatively scraped a tiny amount onto a cracker and the sheer strength and bitterness of this spreadable cheese took the roof off my mouth. What on earth had I bought?

After some research, I found out that ricotta forte is a Pugliese speciality which is also popular in the neighbouring region of Basilicata. Its origins date back nearly one thousand years to when local shepherds would create their own unique version of the soft cheese ricotta (used in a variety of Italian sweet and savoury dishes) by placing it into wooden, glass or ceramic containers, adding salt and then storing in a dark, damp place to encourage the growth of mould. Traditionally covered with fig leaves, the cheese would be opened and stirred every week but overall, the fermentation process would take around three months. The fungus that grew gave the cheese its distinctive spicy flavour and one of the reasons the shepherds preferred this potent variety of ricotta was the fact it would keep for so long (it is said that ricotta forte never really ‘goes off’).

Ricotta forte being produced in the traditional way and served on crostini with anchovies.

The cheese soon became a local speciality and Pugliese families would often make it at home, placing the jars under the kitchen sink or in cool cantine (cellars) to ferment. It is often eaten served on crackers or crostini with anchovies or tomatoes or with sweeter ingredients such as grapes or drizzled honey. Even though I’m a big fan of strong blue cheeses, spreading ricotta forte on crostini is not for the faint-hearted. I actually found that stirring a teaspoon (yes, a teaspoon is all you need) into a pasta dish or a tomato sauce works better and adds a spiciness and piquant flavour. I also used a little in a mousse and served this with roasted fennel – the recipe courtesy of A Taste For Travel can be found here.

A Taste for Travel’s recipe for Fennel au gratin with ricotta forte mousse.

Ricotta forte has been recognised by the Ministry of Agricultural, Food and Forestry Policies as a typical food of Puglia and Basilicata and has been awarded PAT (prodotto agroalimentare tradizionale) status. Incredibly, the Campania region alone has 515 of these. The Slow Food organisation has also sung the cheese’s praises and in particular its time-honoured production method and long shelf life. In line with the current craze for fermented food such as kimchi and sauerkraut, ricotta forte is also said to have numerous health properties including aiding digestion, boosting gut bacteria and even killing off worms. Good to know.

One jar of ricotta forte is likely to last you the best part of a year (you could even consider it an investment, of sorts) and it really does have a taste unlike any other cheese. You could do worse than picking up a jar of the stuff when you next visit Italy or a well-stocked Italian deli in the UK. You never know, it might even come in handy if you are planning on organising a stag do or a sports team initiation ritual in the near future too.

You can find a video showing the traditional production process of ricotta forte courtesy of Maria Rosa Pinto below:

There is also an English-speaking ricotta forte taste test here.

Cured pig jowl. Or to be more accurate, “the lower fleshy part of the animal’s cheek and neck”. It’s not a term that usually makes most people salivate but guanciale is considered a necessity in Italian cookery and is also the subject of a fierce culinary rivalry with its close but actually, still quite distant relative pancetta.

Guanciale is made using the pig’s cheek and jowl. It is generally rubbed and seasoned in salt, pepper, sage, thyme, rosemary and sometimes garlic, and then dried and aged for at least three months. The result is a strong-flavoured meat with a texture that softens in the pan in contrast to pancetta, which has a tendency to crisp up. Most of the fat renders away and gives a deep and distinctive flavour to classic Italian pasta dishes such as Spaghetti alla Carbonara, the tomatoey Sugo alla Amatriciana and the Roman speciality Pasta alla Gricia.

Pancetta in comparison, is made with pork belly that’s seasoned and flavoured with salt, black or red pepper and ingredients such as chilli, juniper and garlic. The curing process is usually quicker and can last anything from three weeks to three months. Pancetta can be unsmoked or affumicata and produced either in rolls (typical of Northern Italy) or in wafer-thin slices (more common in the South). Its flavour is more delicate and therefore, more versatile than guanciale but there is really no contest when the stronger flavour of the former is required for particular recipes.

Guanciale, salumi and salsiccia for days.

I first knowingly experienced a dish made with guanciale in August 2017 at Pasta Remoli, a fantastic, wallet-friendly Italian neighbourhood restaurant tucked away on a side street in Finsbury Park, North London (now happily expanded to seven locations in the capital). I had decided to shake things up a bit by moving out of my comfortable, yet small flat on Stockwell Road, Brixton and taking on a complete renovation project up on Brixton Hill. For the next five months whilst the new flat was uninhabitable, I lived transiently in a combination of run-down student halls, cheap, seedy hotels and finally a Bailey caravan on the site at Crystal Palace Park. I had spent two weeks living in the relatively plush University of Arts London accommodation block Sketch House, hence my chance discovery of the delights of Pasta Remoli.

The caravan during this period. December 2017. Crystal Palace.

I ate at Pasta Remoli a number of times over that fortnight and on one occasion tried the chef’s recommendation, Pasta alla Gricia. It was deliciously salty and the guanciale provided a robust umami taste. The Head Chef and Owner Simone Remoli even popped out of the kitchen to see how I’d enjoyed it. I was an instant convert.

I took an Italian friend who was typically picky with food and sceptical about the trattoria-style restaurants in London to Pasta Remoli a year later and it got their seal of approval too. Highly recommended to any Londoners reading this blog!

Guanciale alongside a Pugliese *burrata*.

In Italy, guanciale is available in most of the bigger supermarkets, as well as the butchers (La Macelleria). In the UK, more specialist delis may stock it, although unsmoked bacon cubes can also be used as an alternative.

Shopping in Bari, guanciale costs as little as €3 for 300g. Its flavour is pungent so best to use it sparingly – you’ll need a sharp knife or even scissors too as the outer casing can be tough. I’ve cooked Spaghetti alla Carbonara and Pasta alla Gricia with it and the liquid fat wonderfully coats the pasta and gives the dishes a burst of flavour, as well as a glistening, yellow-ish, hue. The only downside is that my flat smelled like the kitchen of a greasy spoon (for the non-UK readers, the informal name for a traditional British breakfast café) for the next 24 hours – you’ve been warned!

Ricotta forte; the strongest cheese on earth?

Guanciale; an appreciation

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