Bel Paese
This cheese that carousels has accompanied the childhood of many of us who have spent sixty years of age was born from an original recipe by Egidio Galbani.
Yes Galbani, the founder of the Melzo company of the same name who told us, in the carousels, Galbani means trust.
Unfortunately, all of us have lost some confidence in the Bel Paese, and here I am not referring to the cheese.
Returning instead to cheese, it is produced with following ingredients: with raw cow’s milk, it is given a round shape of about 20cm and must have a weight of 2 kg. Its paste has white color, soft and elastic.
It should be consumed within 20 days of processing.
Officially this cheese is also called “Italic” and is classified as fat cheese, short maturing, fresh and semi-hard paste. But for everyone it is only Il Bel Paese.
It was therefore 1906 and Egidio Galbani, fed up with the overwhelming power of French cheeses exhibited as first women in all the most prestigious delicatessens in Milan, decided to make a very high quality Italian cheese.
He baptized him with the same title as a book he loved to read. The book was a writing by Abbot Antonio Stoppani of 1876 entitled precisely “Il Bel paese”.
This story reminds us that the great Giovanni D’Anzi, tired of having to always play Neapolitan songs, decided to write a very Milanese one of great effect and so O mia bella Madunina was born.
Involuntarily Egidio Galbani and Giovanni D’Anzi have made, each in his field, a great gift to Milan: to never be outdone.
Video – O mia bella Madunina
Un abbraccio/ a big Hug
Marcus Dardi
