Patty J Guided By Collette: Say Cheese, Italian Style
Think you've had outstanding mozzarella?
WELL YOU HAVEN'T!!!
Yesterday, on Day 3 of our #GoCollette adventure, we got the scoop about real buffalo (bufalo) mozzarella, made here in 🇮🇹 Italy at the Vannulo farm, about an hour and a half drive from our hotel, where they also grow organic veggies and sell things like bags & custom belts made from the skins of the male buffalos. (The ratio of females to males there is somewhere around 200 to 12 on any given day - because the milk is what is prized and needed to produce this super FRESH cheese, which has a shelf life of about 3-4 days and must never ever, as our guide explained, see the inside of a frig.)
Some people might think 'buffalo mozzarella' is just code for EXPENSIVE. Not the case in southern Italy, where the mozz is made from actual buffalo milk. Yup, we found authentic mozzarella di bufala, made by hand, with great care, from unpasteurized buffalo milk. (It's an art! You'll agree once you see it.)
The buffalo split their time between a grazing pasture and a milking facility where great effort is spent minimizing their stress levels, so that they produce the best quality milk possible: they even get to listen to Mozart!