Vastedda della Valle del Belìce DOP

Records of the cheese reach back to the mid-fifteenth century in the Belìce valley, the swathe of western Sicily where the provinces of Agrigento, Trapani and Palermo meet. It is said to have been born of summer necessity: pecorino wheels that spoiled in the heat before they could cure were rescued by breaking the paste and re-spinning it in hot water, turning a defective sheep's cheese into a fresh one to be eaten at once. The milk comes only from the Valle del Belìce ewe, a local breed built up from Pinzirita, Comisana and Sarda stock. Registered as a DOP in 2010 and safeguarded as a Slow Food Presidio, it may be made in just seventeen towns of the valley.

Freshly made, it is bright white and yields with a soft, springy squeak, the smooth paste pulling apart in gentle strands. The flavour is clean and milky, sweet at first with the richness of ewe's milk and finishing on a light, fresh sourness. Eaten young and cool, sometimes with a little oil, salt and oregano on warm bread, it is delicate and refreshing rather than sharp.

Like all stretched-curd cheese, it works only once acid has freed calcium from the casein so the protein can be drawn into fibres in hot water; here the curd is brought to that point by its own natural fermentation, with no added starter. Sheep's milk is the hard case: it carries far more fat and protein than cow's milk and its curd is softer and less elastic, so the window in which it will stretch cleanly rather than tear or grease off is narrow, which is why so few can spin it. Because it is eaten within days, no ageing enzymes get to work, so the flavour stays that of fresh milk, sweet, faintly sour and clean, while the tight, spun protein network gives the smooth, springy body with none of the graininess of a set-curd cheese.