It's been a while since I covered a member of my favorite food group--which is, of course, cheese. Fortunately, I was able to locate a good candidate or two recently. The one I'll discuss today is radically different, as it's a "dessert cheese." Aside from my post which included a "chocolate cheese" (see my May 12, 2013 post for more info) and maybe my encounter with mascarpone (May 9th, 2020), I haven't had many examples from this cheese subgenre. To be more exact, I tried the baked lemon ricotta from Il Villaggio.
As has become very common recently, I can't tell you much about the Il Villaggio company. Their official website, and alternate ones, have almost nothing. I couldn't learn who founded the business, and when, and even where, aside from "somewhere in Italy." About the only nugget I discovered is that their cheese expert is a guy named Dan Melotti. Even the cheese list on the official website was rather lacking in detail. They do make a parmigiano reggiano, ricotta salata, fontina, gorgonzola, pecorino Romano, provolone piccante, taleggio, asiago fresco, and cheese accompaniments like balsamic vinegar and little pieces of hard bread or crackers. Oh, and if you're wondering, "Il Villaggio" means "The Village" in Italian.
I was able to locate a bit more about the company that recently acquired and now owns Il Villaggio, the Atalanta Corporation. This New York City-based firm began in 1945, founded by Herbert Moeller and Leon Rubin, who were businessmen. The company specialized in importing foods from other countries, which appear to be mostly European nations. As of now their many respective brands include 3000 different kinds of cheese, from 45 countries. Along with 500 grocery items from 30 nations (presumably not 30 entirely new and separate countries from the 45 cheese-making ones). Aside from Il Villaggio some of their brands include Big Picture Foods (organic olives, peppers, and capers), Cracking Good! Cheese (cheeses from the British Isles), Casa Flores (Spanish meats and cheeses), Mt. Vikos (Greek food), Royal Mahout (Indian cuisine), and Celebrity Goat (which market cheese and butter made from goat milk, but not, disappointingly, from goats that are actually famous, or even infamous). Evidently a Thomas Gellert is the CEO or owner of Atalanta, and the parent company of Atalanta is called the Gellert Global Group. Atalanta bought up Il Villaggio in 2017. So that was my only data for Il Villaggio's starting date--they've been around since at least 2017. Reportedly Il Villaggio used to have a worth of 25,000,000 (Euros? American dollars? It didn't specify), but was in decline when they were sold off.
Moving on, readers may be asking, "What kind of cheese is ricotta, specifically?" Well, it's ancient--it dates back to the 2nd Millenium B.C., and is believed to have been born in what's now Italy. Ricotta is an example of the "using-every-part-of-the-buffalo" strategy. After other cheeses are made, the remaining scraps and byproducts are then used to make ricotta. The remaining whey is harvested after it becomes acidic from fermentation, which takes about 12-24 hours. This is then heated to near-boiling temperatures, which produce some curds. These are then cooled, and strained through fine cloth. The resulting cheese is usually white, soft, sweet, and very fragile and ephemeral. It's often used to augment pastries and other desserts, similar to mascarpone. Some folks bake the ricotta again, to cause it to harden and toughen, and have a longer shelf life. American ricotta is saltier and moister than the Italian kind, mostly because American usually uses only the milk of cows, while the Italian sort uses milk from sheep, goats, and water buffalo as well as cows. Baked lemon ricotta is believed to have been developed in the Southern Italian region of Puglia. It's a dessert cheese, and its taste and texture are often compared to cheesecake.
Il Villaggio baked lemon ricotta cheese: It looked like a little cake--round, with an outer color of light brown, with a syrup-y shiny sheen to it. The inner portions were light yellow. First, I tried some plain. It was very sweet, with a recognizable lemon tang. It didn't taste like normal, savory cheese, but more like cheesecake, or custard, even. Or flan. Very soft texture, almost spreadable. It was quite tasty, if more than a little weird. It was also good on crispbread, as the sweetness combined nicely with the savory/salty flavors of the base. Overall it wasn't my favorite cheese, but it was a cool take on the style. Certainly a different, and interesting, choice for a dessert.
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