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Gorgonzola
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Description
Name: Gorgonzola.
Product type: Soft or semi-hard cow's milk cheese with distinctive blue-green veining achieved through the use of special mould during processing.
Raw material: Pasteurised cow's milk with the addition of mould and rennet.
It takes 100 litres of cow's milk to produce a 12 kg round of cheese.
Maturing: Variable.
Production area: From Gorgonzola, in the northern Italian region of Lombardy, production has spread towards Piedmont too.
Note: Gorgonzola is the perfect companion for full-bodied red wines, owing to its slightly pungent flavour.Heated over a low flame, in seconds it makes an excellent sauce for quick pasta dishes. |
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Mellow, pungent, creamy (but not excessively). No number of adjectives could ever suffice to describe this extraordinary cheese produced in the Northern Italian regions of Piedmont and Lombardy.
Legend has it that this cheese is the result of a mistake made by a young cheese-maker who, distracted by a pressing engagement with his girlfriend, put off the job of finishing the cheese until the next day. Mixing the curd of the previous evening's milk with that morning's fresh milk, the young man came up with a brand new cheese. Perhaps we will never know the truth but what is certain is that on the Italian cheese scene, Gorgonzola deserves a special mention of honour for its distinctive flavour.
This characteristic is afforded by the use of selected mould types during processing which create the blue-green veining that marbles the cheese in an unmistakable manner.
It takes 100 litres of cow's milk to produce a 12 kg round of cheese. The milk is produced and processed in the areas established by the DOP (Denominazione d'Origine Protetta - Protected Designation of Origin) (Bergamo, Biella, Brescia, Como, Cremona, Cuneo, Lecco, Lodi, Milan, Novara, Pavia, Varese, Verbania, Vercelli and Casale Monferrato).
Gorgonzola is a live cheese, meaning that it continues to ripen all the time; a good reason for not buying it in large quantities if you are not sure that it is going to be eaten within a short period of time.
Melted in a drop of milk, flavoured with nutmeg and pepper, it makes a quick and easy sauce with a punchy flavour, perfect with Mafaldine that finish off their cooking in the pan with the cheese. Other recipes worth trying include Conchiglie Rigate with speck and gorgonzola and Lasagne with gorgonzola, broccoli and walnuts. Gorgonzola is also available blended with mascarpone, ideal for making first course dishes. The inclusion of mascarpone tames the pungent nature of the gorgonzola, making it better for sauces.
The tasting of this marbled cheese immediately reveals its distinct nature and it requires the accompaniment of a good, full-bodied red wine, from Montepulciano d'Abruzzo to Blauburgunder from Alto Adige. If, however, the pungent flavour is mitigated by an obvious mellowness, then rosé wines such as Cerasuolo or sparkling dry white wines such as Cartizze will go well.
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