"Padduni" goat cheese

Product included in the national list of traditional agri-food products (PAT)

PAT type: Cheeses

Production area: Whole Sicilian Territory

Technical data sheet of the traditional agri-food product (PAT)

Historical equipment: Wooden vat, wooden "patella" stick, wooden cisca, wooden boards, baskets of "fascedde" rush, tinned copper boiler. Direct wood-gas fire.

Brief historical notes: The origins of this cheese date back to the XNUMXth century BC Homer speaks of a drink based on grated goat cheese. Even Aristotle, in the XNUMXth century BC, dwells on Sicilian dairy traditions, enhancing the taste of goat's milk mixed with cow's or sheep's milk.

In the Roman period, XNUMXnd century BC, Varro places the accent on the nourishing qualities of goat's milk and goat's cheeses. A hint of the goodness of goat cheese appears in the "Complete course of theoretical, practical and economic agriculture" by Abbot Rozier around the eighteenth century.

The transformation technology is illustrated in the aforementioned book by Campisi.

Type: Raw cheese.

Production: The entire Sicilian territory.

Main production technology lines:

• species / breed: Goat;
• raw material: Whole milk, raw;
• microflora: Natural;
• rennet: Lamb pasta sometimes of kid;

prevailing power supply system: Pasture rich in spontaneous essences rarely integrated with stable feeding.

processing techniques: The padduni (Sicilian goat cheese) differs from the "cheeseu ri goat" for the shape (ball vs cylindrical), for the weight (300gr. Vs 3 Kg.), For the salting and above all for the aging (fresh vs 3 months ). The milk coagulates in a wooden vat at about 37 ° C with lamb and / or kid rennet paste in about 45 '. It is possible to add black peppercorns or red pepper flakes.

The curd is drained with the hands in a very particular wooden container, "cisca", is then seared with hot, formed and salted scotta;

salting: Dry on the entire surface of the last.

Product features: It has a ball shape, weighs about 300 gr., Is eaten fresh.

Historical references:

Pliny the Elder: "Naturalis Historia ”(11th book).

Pietro de Crescenzi: "Liber ruralium commodorum", 1294.

Homer: "Odyssey" (9th book), 1950th-XNUMXth century. BC, Onorato Castellino – Vincenzo Peloso, Graphic Workshops XNUMX.

Virgil: "Bucolics and Georgics" (Eclogue V and book 3), 37-30 BC / 42-39 BC, Lorenzo Giudice, 1954.

National Institute of Rural Sociology: "Atlas of typical products: cheeses", Franco Angeli, Milan, 1990.

Campisi Carmelo "Sheep and pecorino of Sicily", Francesco Battiato publisher, Catania, 1933.

Source Pat Cards: Sicily Region 

Card insertion: Ignazio Caloggero

Information contributions: Web, Region of Sicily

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