Among the most frequently seen items on Italian restaurants in America, number eighteen is burrata. This is a cheese originally from the region of Puglia in southeastern Italy with a soft texture consisting of a thin outer shell of mozzarella with an inside of additional fresh cheese and cream. The elaborate process to make it begins with cream being pasteurized and cooled. Mozzarella is made coagulating milk and stretching the curds. Then that mozzarella is wrapped and molded around the cream, which has also formed curds. Usually served in the ball-like form in which it is made, this mild-tasting, moist cheese is best when very fresh and eaten with just-cracked black pepper and a drizzle of high-quality olive oil.
Unknown outside of its home area near the town of Adria north of Bari until the 1980s or so, it began to gain some traction in southern California with the opening of a cheese factory in the Los Angeles area in the early 1990s by native of Puglia. Most Italian restaurants then did not know what to do with it, as it was such a hyper-regional product. Chef Gino Angelini at Rex in Los Angeles, one of the country’s very best Italian restaurants at the time, refused to put it an the menu as he was unfamiliar with it. But burrata would catch on. It has became extremely popular in America in the past decade, used as a fancy mozzarella. Often as an antipasto with toasted bread, it also makes it into salads, substituting for the similar mozzarella in a Caprese, or with greens, on pizzas and into pastas. It has become common throughout Italy, too, far from its origin. I saw it almost every menu on a recent trip to eastern Sicily and had it on pizza, in a salad, and in pastas. Fresh and light and versatile, it has became another Italian restaurant fixture.
Pizza with burrata at At Canonet in Coregliano a few summers ago. It worked very well on it.
Unknown outside of its home area near the town of Adria north of Bari until the 1980s or so, it began to gain some traction in southern California with the opening of a cheese factory in the Los Angeles area in the early 1990s by native of Puglia. Most Italian restaurants then did not know what to do with it, as it was such a hyper-regional product. Chef Gino Angelini at Rex in Los Angeles, one of the country’s very best Italian restaurants at the time, refused to put it an the menu as he was unfamiliar with it. But burrata would catch on. It has became extremely popular in America in the past decade, used as a fancy mozzarella. Often as an antipasto with toasted bread, it also makes it into salads, substituting for the similar mozzarella in a Caprese, or with greens, on pizzas and into pastas. It has become common throughout Italy, too, far from its origin. I saw it almost every menu on a recent trip to eastern Sicily and had it on pizza, in a salad, and in pastas. Fresh and light and versatile, it has became another Italian restaurant fixture.
Pizza with burrata at At Canonet in Coregliano a few summers ago. It worked very well on it.
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