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L'histoire de la “ricotta”.
Tasty, fresh and light, this cheese
is made of ewe milk and goat milk. It
allows realizing very good cakes thanks
to its delicate taste which fits with
various flavours.
The masterpieces of the Sicilian pastry (Cannoli, Sicilian Cassata,
Cassatelles, etc.) could not exist without this cheese whose history goes
back to a very ancient era.
Indeed, in the masterpiece
"Homer's Odyssey," the Cyclops
Polyphème prepares this cheese
for Ulysses and his adventure
buddies. So the Cave of
Polyphemus, which according to
mythological studies was in Sicily
(east of the island), was the first
dairy cheese in history.
In the Middle Ages, this cheese disappeared. It reappears with Saint
Francis of Assisi, who will teach the making of the ricotta to the
shepherds. For him, this cheese is both poor and simple but also perfectly
white and divine, like the latter.
Nowadays, we find this
cheese again in litterature
thanks to Pierpaolo Pasolini, a
contemporary author. He went
further than Homer because this
sweet became the title of one of
his works.
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