There are significant moments in anyone's life, and one of them is surely the first time one meets a buffalo. In anybody's book this is a serious proposition, like meeting the King of Siam or a subterranean boatman. These events are common currency in Campania, the region of Italy around Naples, where buffalo are as prevalent as commuters on a train in the land of mozzarella. In fields and farmyards they shift from foot to foot, lazily slurping at their salivating muzzles.
But it's not easy for a stranger to close in on them. On the farm where I had the privilege (it's certainly nothing less) of an introduction to them there were probably 100 head in the yard, with another 400 out at pasture.
They are altogether satisfactory beasts, with fabulous horns and a rich and fecund smell. En masse they shuffled forward to the gate, with the noise from their expansive, wet nostrils like a steam train in a tunnel as they sniffed out intriguing nuggets of information about my provenance. But a slow reach of the hand to their heads provoked a worrisome shake, a fastidious disinclination to intimacy, as if one had shaken hands with a particularly difficult duchess when one had forgotten to clean one's nails.
After some more moments of snorting and disinclination a considerable matron barged her way forward, watched with a sigh by a tired-looking bull. He'd clearly had enough of her.
'Ah, here's Mildred,' said the farmer, called Alphonso. Perhaps he didn't say Mildred, but it was some such affectionate moniker. 'She's very intelligent,' he continued, and with some pride. It showed on his face. 'Ma attenzione. Lei e un po cattiva [Be careful. She's a bit naughty].'
But naughtiness seemed the last thing on her mind as she thrust her head forward. And it was a big head, quite useful, for instance, as the cornerstone of a large church or monument. She had very dark eyes, liquid and profound. The hair on her skull was wiry, her neck heaped with fat, her nose and mouth dripping with saliva.
I scratched her forehead - this pleased her. I offered the palm of my hand, which she licked for the salt with a massive tongue. It was a fundamental experience. I turned to Alphonso, thrilled and careless. The man from the tourist office stood well back with eyes wide, as if this was the Italian mother-in-law to beat all. 'Attenzione!' said Alphonso, but not with much feeling.
Mildred placed her head firmly against me and pushed, as a dog seeks attention with its nose. Of course, Mildred was quite a bit bigger, so I was suddenly not where I was but a few feet further away. Perhaps this is what happens when you get hit by a heavyweight boxer, but they lack the qualities she had. For some time afterwards the smell of her was on my hands and clothes, and I was reluctant to be rid of it.
Water buffalo arrived in Italy in the sixteenth century, from India and North Africa. Italians had it in mind that these beasts of burden, toil and milk were just the job for a country without them, in much the same way as they have adopted concrete, or McDonald's. From Sicily in the south, buffalo reached the fertile wetlands of the plain of Naples where, like pigs in muck, they thrived. There are photographs in the revered organ, Bufalus Bufalis, the trade paper, of the likes of Mildred wallowing in the serenity of the watery plain, half-benign and at ease.
Although Bufalus Bufalis has learned articles on the arcane physiology of the water buffalo, Mildred and her lot are a hardy race, bothering Alphonso, for instance, with very few vets' bills. Mostly the articles are concerned with artificial insemination (a mind-boggling exercise) and the fabulous and extraordinary productivity rates of water buffalo.
At the farm an old hand took me by the arm and led me to the faded redbrick wall of the barn and showed me some hieroglyphics marked there.
'This is the date, 70 years ago, when we broke the record. She was an exceptional cow. For two years she gave 20 litres of milk a day. One day, in one day,' with a sharp and justified poke of his finger into my shoulder, 'she gave 24 litres, and the next, 23 and a half.' He turned away, his gnarled hands working at the marks on the wall. 'Where are you from, anyway?'
Down the road from the farm is the local co-operative dairy, where they make the famed mozzarella cheese from the buffalo milk. It is a modern, concrete affair, with an enormous car park for the milk tankers that arrive daily. Inside the dairy is a state-of-the-art operation, spotlessly clean and gleaming with stainless steel machinery. The vats are scrubbed by lunchtime, the main business of the day over, with at least 3,000 litres of milk processed, packaged and shipped to the US, Japan, Australia and most of Europe. The floor was awash with water from the hoses being used to clean the equipment, so that everyone moved with exaggerated care for fear of slipping on the tiles, like astronauts in space. All wore white overalls, including visitors, ghosting through the sluicing waters.
However, there were four men still working at two old wooden vats, folding the last of the day's mozzarella for selected local consumption. The two vats were a few feet away from each other. At the first one man quartered off lumps of the mass of mozzarella, while two men rhythmically turned from the second vat to take his offerings.
They then turned back with their slithery wedges and proffered them at waist level to the fourth man, standing on the other side of the second vat which was filled with water. He took the cheese with both hands, in a methodical, diligent grasp, sufficient from each man in turn to massage the lump into a rounded ball, very much the same as that to be found in good delicatessens.
There is a difference, however, which they were at pains to point out. Across the top of the ball was a ridge formed by the separation from the main mass by the thumbs, not uniform and forming a Y. It is the mark of handmade mozzarella, since machine-made mozzarella has a single, regular ridge that no thumb can form. So now you know.
The human chain of dairymen was mesmeric, the solid, deep-shouldered men with earnest faces bent over their work producing the small, plump white parcels of mozzarella as if they were delivering weird and alien embryos, sleek, soft and wet. Then, in a display of largesse, one of them folded a tube of mozzarella he had formed into a trecchia, a plait, as he worked it making it look nothing less than a particularly repugnant intestine from a large but hitherto unrecognised mammal. In Caserta, the local main town, and the villages around, there are shops devoted to the sale of mozzarella, like rock in Brighton, where the locals are particular with their patronage. In fact, throughout Italy aficionados of mozzarella swear by the quality of the cheese from Campania, and sneer at anything else.
Even in the north of Italy there are rules to be observed. In the Latteria Ronchi Francesco, for example, a celebrated cheese shop in the back streets of Venice behind the Rialto, there was dismay, even incredulity, when I suggested that mozzarella di bufala should come from anywhere except Campania. It was as if I'd sworn violently in front of the children.
Francesco, the proprietor, looked at me with the utmost suspicion. 'The cheese from the mountains comes from the mountains, does it not?' he asserted. 'Mozzarella di bufala comes from Campania.' A sympathetic customer sensed my predicament. 'It's the grass they eat down there, the air they breathe, the ambiente. You can't find it anywhere else.'
Francesco was eyeing his covolini, small balls of mozzarella nestling in a tray, with protective care, as if I was going to assault them. He relented sufficiently to declare that it was impossible to create good mozzarella di bufala anywhere but in Campania, even though a few had been foolish enough to try. Their enterprises were short-lived.
He keeps his mozzarella for no longer than three days, maintaining that it loses its quality after that. It is also relatively dry, at least no more than damp, since too much water will kill the taste.
So great has been the culture of mozzarella in Italy that now India, from whence the buffalo originally came, has now introduced the art of cheese-making from buffalo milk in the 'manner' of Campania, and a thriving new industry has been established. Whether or not they have thumbed ridges on their cheese has not yet been ascertained.
Caponata di Napoli
serves 4
450g slightly dry firm-textured country-style bread
4 ripe tomatoes, de-seeded and diced
450g mozzarella torn into 1cm pieces
a handful of fresh basil leaves, torn
1tsp dried oregano
125ml extra virgin olive oil
sea salt, black pepper
Tear bread into small chunks. Combine with the tomatoes, mozzarella, basil, oregano, salt and pepper. Drizzle generously with olive oil. Mix well and serve. From Bringing Italy Home by Ursula Ferrigno Mitchell Beasley £20. To order for £17 plus p&p, call the Observer book service on 0870 066 7989.
