Italian Cheese: A Guide to Their Discovery and Appreciation [Paperback]

Piero Sardo (Editor), Gigi Piumatti (Editor), Roberto Rubino (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 2001

Slow Food is sweeping the nation, at a snail's pace. This international organization was started in Italy by people who perceive McDonald's as the symbol of a society that is overshooting its own limits. The greatest loss of all is the pleasure of eating foods that are made without the restrictions of time. Many of the cheeses portrayed in this delightful book--stracciata, giuncata, formaggio di fossa, formaggetta della valle Argentina--are not household names and they probably never will be. They're a few of the 201 traditional Italian farmhouse cheeses lovingly described in this new book from Slow Food International as a "contribution to the conservation of a vast heritage of local products, born of Italy's extraordinarily varied landscapes, natural environments, dairy breeds, and cheesemaking techniques." Starting with illustrated descriptions of traditional and industrial cheesemaking, Slow Food's authors take us through the processes of buying, tasting, and storing cheeses. Dictionaries of tasting terms and the language of cheeses and cheesemaking provide essential preludes for the heart of this book--descriptions of Italy's farmhouse cheeses, traditionally made from cow's, ewe's, and goat's milk. Organized by region and accompanied by elegant color photographs, each description covers how the cheese is made and matured, along with historical and geographic nuggets. Written by people in love with farmhouse cheeses, and with everything small, local, slow, and traditional foods and food systems represent, this is an informative and hopeful book, celebrating a rich, rural European tradition. This book will make you start packing your bags for a cheese lover's tour of Italy.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Slow Food, founded in 1986, is an international organization whose aim is to protect the pleasures of the table from the homogenization of the modern fast-food life. Through a variety of initiatives, it promotes gastronomic culture, conserves agricultural biodiversity and protects traditional foods at risk of extinction. It now boasts more than 80,000 members in 100 countries. A portion of the proceeds from sales of A World of Presidia will go to the Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity to support Presidia projects.

Product Details

• Paperback: 309 pages
• Publisher: Slow Food Arcigola Editore srl (July 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 8886283989
• ISBN-13: 978-8886283984
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 4.7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,792,602 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Yum!, May 12, 2007

By 

A. Sloo "Librarian" (California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Italian Cheese: A Guide to Their Discovery And Appreciation (Revised and Expanded, 2005) (Paperback)

This is an incredible and thorough resource on Italian cheeses. It doesn't have every Italian cheese known to man, but it comes close. The book is organized by region, and each page is devoted to one cheese. Fun to read if you love exploring new foods and a great resource if you're traveling to Italy.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars a frustrating guide - looks encyclopedic but falls far short, May 1, 2010

By 

bearded academic (East Lansing, MI USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Italian Cheese: A Guide to Their Discovery And Appreciation (Revised and Expanded, 2005) (Paperback)

I purchased this guide with the hopes of using it as a tool when I walked into a cheese store in the US or Rome to decide what new (to me) cheeses to try.

I have found it very frustrating for that purpose. First, it is organized by region of Italy whereas it would typically be more useful to be organized by type of cheese (goat vs. cow milk, blue cheese vs. white cheese, etc). I always find myself reading the book through its index and flipping from front to middle to back of book to decide which cheese of a particular type looks fun.

When I tried to use this book in Rome last week I gave up. The diversity of cheeses is far wider than listed here. To take a concrete example, one store offered a "gorgonzola di buffala dolce." Nothing in this book's description of gorgonzola helped me figure out if the cheese was worth buying (it was). Indeed, the book does not even discuss the very important distinction of dolce vs. picante for gorgonzola.