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54 culturecheesemag.com E N T E R TA I N I N G 202 2 enjoyed on its own, as well as grated on pasta, and paired with full-bodied red wines such as Montepulciano d'Abruzzo and Cerasuolo d'Abruzzo. The Peculiarity of Pig Rennet My third experience with Pecorino di Farindola was at the Slow Food Cheese Festival in Bra, Piemonte, in September 2021. It was here that I briefly met Trevor Warmedahl (@milk_trekker on Instagram), a nomadic cheesemaker and dairy researcher, and the recipient of the 2022 Daphne Zepos Teaching Award. His project is focused on rennet and other coagulants, and how they're produced and used. Warmedahl tasted Pecorino di Farindola for the first time in Bra, and said the strong flavor reminded him of that of Casín from Asturias, Spain, and some Sicilian cheeses that typically have a piquant bite. "But I've only tasted this cheese once, and I've learned you need to give a cheese multiple tries," he says. "Cheese is the ultimate food for expanding your palate." I recently reached out to Warmedahl to ask if he'd ever encountered another cheese made with pig rennet in his travels. He hadn't. "But I have heard stories in countries like Georgia, where they say up in the hills when people don't have rennet or they run out from animals, they use whatever animal stomachs [they can to coagulate milk]… CHEESES OF ABRUZZO Although Pecorino di Farindola is currently not available in the US, if you travel to Italy, you're likely to find it in cities such as Milan, Rome, Florence, Torino, Genova, and Bergamo, as well as throughout Abruzzo. The cheese is also occasionally sold in other countries, including Sweden and Australia. For a taste of formaggi from Abruzzo stateside, look for Reginella d'Abruzzo, a six-month aged pecorino from a family-run producer in Sulmona, imported by Forever Cheese. Marcelli Formaggi also imports sev- eral farmstead cheeses from the small mountain village of Anversa degli Abruzzi. One of my favorites is Man- teca Caciocavallo Podolico, a pasta filata (stretched curd) cheese made with milk from the Podolica cow, enclosing a ball of fresh Podolico butter in the center. The cheese is aged for three to six months, so it hard- ens on the outside and preserves the freshness of the butter on the inside. rabbit is a common one that I've heard," he says. The question of why pig rennet came to be used to make this cheese thousands of years ago remains unanswered, according to Sarto. "I don't know why they don't do it in other places; it's so good! We need to do a survey," he says, laughing. "Probably in the past the populations were very jealous of their local agricultural traditions and wanted to preserve and protect their own, and so this cheese, made in this very particular way, was only ever made here." "It's not a cheese that we make a lot of—the production is very small," he adds. "But I'm happy that people are talking about Pecorino di Farindola, and I'm happy for this little territory. Whoever is interested, I'll send it to them!" c "Cheese is the ultimate food for expanding your palate." Pecorino di Farindola is produced on the eastern slopes of the rocky Gran Sasso d'Italia massif in Abruzzo PHOTOS: © Archivio Slow Food