Provolone del Monaco

The 'del Monaco' — 'of the monk' — is said to come from the heavy woollen capes the cheesemakers of the Lattari mountains wore when they crossed by boat before dawn to sell at the port of Naples, so muffled that they were taken for monks. Herding is held to have moved up into these mountains around 1700, as the expansion of Naples pushed the flocks off the Vomero hill. The cheese is made from the milk of Agerolese cows, a breed now reduced to a few hundred head; the curd is cooked a little more than for caciocavallo, then stretched, shaped and aged for six months or more. It became a DOP in 2010, its production limited to Agerola and a ring of towns on the peninsula and the Lattari slopes.

Young, it is buttery and mild; with six months or more the ivory paste firms, flakes a little at the break, and the finish warms into a peppery, piquant heat. The aromas run to hay, browned butter and toasted nut, with a long savoury tail from the slow maturation.

As with all pasta-filata cheese, lactic fermentation acidifies the curd until, reheated in hot water around 85°C, the para-casein turns plastic and can be stretched into aligned fibres. What sets an aged cheese apart is what follows: over six months and more, residual rennet and microbial enzymes break the casein down into peptides and free amino acids, building savoury depth, while lipases split the milk fat into free fatty acids that give the piquant edge. Steady moisture loss concentrates all of it and firms the paste.