Cheeseland

The Burrata

By Irina Iacob

Food | An extension of who we are

There is a word that has the power to seduce your senses, one that can evoke about tremendous sensory experiences. Food - such a small word, only four letters but with a complex meaning.

When referring to food, people start talking about their travels, their memories, certain friends, relatives, or feelings. Why? Because food means sharing a universal experience and it reveals our personal story, the truth about who we are. It’s nothing but common ground. What we eat, what we enjoy most, and choose to put on our plates becomes an extension of us.

Burrata | Exploration, adventure, history, metaphor

If you are a food reader, if you enjoy discovering new recipes, then you probably know that there are lots of cheese types. You won’t find specific recipes in this article, but if you are a taste hunter, keep reading and you’ll discover an adventure! After all, the act of eating means exploring, right ? One food that connects us all is cheese. In the times when a man was able to work his land and agriculture was the only source of feeding, cheese has appeared. In fact, cheese is one of the oldest foods of humanity.

Sheep milk, goat milk, cow milk, or even yak milk were essential products discovered by man and transformed into dairy delights. Talking about cheese is like opening a manuscript and learning about ancient civilizations.

Burrata, a unique sort of cheese; an outstanding, exquisite, and eccentric dairy delight that was recently discovered. And it proved to be an original voice among all types of cheeses people have eaten till now.

Creamy symphonies. Where? When? How?

Being the youngest delight of all the cheeses we all have been knowing, burrata is a pure sensual language. You taste it and you fall in love with it. You are not able to speak about how it looks like, how it smells like, how it tastes like. You just open your mouth and your brain acts like crazy. It is a serotonin choreography; it’s like talking about love or passion.

Burrata has enriched the international gastronomy field thanks to Italian cheesemakers from the early 1900s. It all started back then in the region of Apulia, also known as Puglia. This delicacy was produced by only a few people in Andria, a town situated in the South part of Italy. From the beginning, it was considered a delicacy due to its making process.

It is a very creamy sort of cheese made with mozzarella. To prepare this fresh Italian product, you need cow milk, cream, rennet, cultures, and salt. When milk turns into cheese, it starts to curdle and it thickens. Then, boiling water is poured over the curds and it starts a stretching process. Stretching strings are made with bare hands. Next: the key-word called a pouch. A pouch is filled with scraps of mozzarella and a yellow heavy cream mixture. The final step: the pouch gets sealed and tied up. What do you get? A ball of mozzarella with an original signature which consists of a creamy flavorful filling that can be served as the main course.

Burrata Cheese Recipe with Roasted Cherry Tomatoes

Photo By @heartbeetkitchen

Its shiny white layer can be kissed by a green basil leaf, a salad, a red juicy tomato, or everything that can seduce your eyes. You are the one who can turn it into an artistic experience, you’re the painter of your plate.

Burrata became more available in the 1950s and is still considered a delicacy across Apulia and outside of the region. You can also find it in the U.S., on the East coast in particular, where there are many Italian f amilies and their cheese-making traditions have been preserved. Moreover, its creamy consistency named this type of cheese ‘’burrata’’ because it means ‘’buttery’’ in Italian.

So what’s burrata? It is a creamy symphony, a metaphor; an explosion and a silence at the same time; a piece of art; a woman dressed in white silk; a pearl inside a shell; it is the sensuality of the senses. You’ve got a pearl in your mouth, you crush it, and your senses are drowned into a creamy exquisite flavor. Your expectancy level is higher than you could have guessed it.

It is like entering into a sanctuary. You’re in and out of a creamy filling and you want to feel those opposite layers of pleasure over and over again. All this sensual perception you embrace makes it one of the most ludic dishes due to its contrast. It is like when you go to several dates with the same person wanting to keep alive for more time than the first sensory experience you had.

Final Thoughts

Food has always been a necessity, a medicine, a blessing. Burrata is a cultural marker, an eloquent speaker of its kind; one that nourishes your spirit and rearranges your values. It’s impressive that burrata became a delicacy given the fact that it dates back to the 1990s. So, only a few decades ago, just four ingredients changed the cheese market and the international gastronomy forever: cow milk, rennet, cream, and salt.

Burrata is a metaphor for that Heaven picture all cheese lovers have always imagined: clouds, light, peace, smoothness, bohemian rhapsody, and an angel playing the harp.