Insalata Caprese with Yellow Tomatoes
I’m sure you’ve had pizza a thousand times…and lasagne another thousand times…and you’ve probably sampled everything else on the menu at your favorite Italian restaurant…but have you ever had real mozzarella?
I finally did last week. Turns out that real mozzarella goes far, far beyond a ball of fresh cheese in whey (the cloudy liquid part). The honest-to-goodness deal is made of 100% buffalo milk. There are a few other cheeses traditionally made from buffalo — Egyptian domiati, Bangladeshi chhena, and Filipino kesong puti, to name a few — but I’d never come across any of them before. The flavor of buffalo-milk mozzarella is much, much richer and stronger than what I’d ever had before, and the texture is entirely different, too — it’s grainer and pouffier and almost cake-like in consistency. In short, the real deal makes American mozzarella taste and feel like uninspired plastic.
I’m a convert! It’s worth paying a bit more than $6 for a single large ball of Mozzarella di Bufala at Trader Joe’s for special occasions. And if you use it in a simple dish like insalata caprese,* you’ll be able to savor all of its complexities. Taste it! You’ll be glad you did.
Now, if I could only find some camel-milk cheese to sample…
*sliced tomatoes, fresh basil, balsamic vinegar, extra-virgin olive oil, sea salt & freshly-cracked black pepper
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Tags: authentic, cheese, insalata caprese, italy, mozzarella, water buffalo
