Be careful of what's on the menu.

[Hand of Evil]

No it's not. And even if it was, buffalo are just a variety of cattle anyway, so it's not really that exotic.

Mozzarella was originally made from water-buffalo milk in Italy. Most fresh mozzarella now comes from cow's milk, both in Italy and here in North America. quote from the web site...most...

 

[Desdichado]

Yes, Hand. You quoted the part that said your claim was wrong. Oddly enough, you did so in an attempt to support your claim, it appears. I'm not sure I'm following you there...

 

[Turjan]

No it's not. And even if it was, buffalo are just a variety of cattle anyway, so it's not really that exotic.

Well, it was and some of it still is. The original buffalo mozzarella has a much better taste, btw. . I like it very much.

 

[Turjan]

Yes, Hand. You quoted the part that said your claim was wrong. Oddly enough, you did so in an attempt to support your claim, it appears. I'm not sure I'm following you there...

Some case of slight reading impairment this morning ?

 

[Desdichado]

What mozzarella was made from in the days of Anthony and Cleopatra is pretty much a moot point. As is the way in which mozzarella is made in some off-the-wall specialty cheese shop as opposed to, y'know, the mozzarella you can actually get.

 

[Turjan]

What mozzarella was made from in the days of Anthony and Cleopatra is pretty much a moot point. As is the way in which mozzarella is made in some off-the-wall specialty cheese shop as opposed to, y'know, the mozzarella you can actually get.

That's a somewhat lame excuse . It's not difficult to get buffalo mozzarella, though it may be true for the U.S. (I was quite surprised when I first came upon what goes for mozzarella over here). At the last place where I lived, I could just buy buffalo mozzarella in a shop a short walk down the street, which carried quite a lot of Italian stuff.

Anyway, very good cow mozzarella is nearly as good. Cheese production today can achieve a lot with the right ingredients. Most feta (sheep cheese) is also made from cow's milk nowadays, due to the right cultures. This does not change anything with the fact that feta was originally made from sheep's milk.

 

[Desdichado]

Possibly. I've never seen water-buffalo mozzarella, though, and I'm a bit of a cheese fan; I go out of my way to look for unusual cheeses.

BTW, feta cheese around here usually prefers to goat, not sheep cheese. Although if you just call it ovicaprid cheese, I guess you're covered either way.

 

[John Morrow]

Sugar beet is a very recent thing; pre-Colombian Europe didn't have refined sugar, we just had honey, and good* teeth.

You don't need refined sugar to get bad teeth. The wide availability of any food rich in sugar will do that for you. In fact, I read an article about a pre-European North American culture where the introduction of the high-sugar maize, which replaced earlier low-sugar grains, was enough to start tooth decay problems in the culture. A lot of the sugar used in foods in the United States is actually "corn syrup" made from corn/maize due to trade policies encouraged by both sugar producers and corn/maize producers in the United States that keep the price of real refined sugar artificially high.

 

[Tonguez]

Something that has periodically befuddled me -- but not enough to actually Google an answer -- is what Italians ate before tomatoes (and pasta, for that matter) were introduced.

The answer is pig fat.

Actually a variety of sauces (many involving pork products and herbs) and pasta has been a staple of italian diets since roman times (it was the noodle/spaghetti that was introduced from asia, flat pasta (eg lasange) is real italian food)


PS I understand that Corn = grain and Corn beef =salted beef (using corns of salt)
but what about the Corns on my motherinlaws toes? Why are they called Corns?

 

[S'mon]

FWIW buffalo mozarella is easily available here in UK, also.