I loved visiting Firenze and its Centro Mercato. That’s Florence’s Central Market to us Anglophones. Not just because I found some beautiful cheese knives, a future post, but because it offered a wonderful array of cheeses, and at last I got to sample a young raw milk cheese.

I loved the folks at Baroni Alimentari the best, but there were plenty of fine cheese stalls.

We’d lucked into staying in an apartment just of the Centro Mercato. Don’t you just love the view from our roof-top terrace?

But the best thing for me, OK the second best after the view, was that apart from five flights of stairs, we were minutes from divine food. A whole universe of cheese and pasta, meat and fish, fruits and vegetables opened up to us.

And one sunny morning I got to I eat this beauty for breakfast. It’s a young, fresh goat’s cheese made with latte crudo – raw milk cheese. At last, my foodie friends I was sampling a cheese I had only read about for this is the youngest raw milk cheese I have eaten to date.

The reason I’m so excited is that whilst we can buy raw milk cheeses in New Zealand, they are all aged cheeses. Even a Brie has been aged for some months. So I’ve been looking forward to trying the youngsters of the cheese world.

And what better to go with the ripe figs we found but such a delicate young cheese. It was light, fresh zesty, with an underlying nuttiness. Too young for any barnyard goat to emerge, it balanced beautifully with the sweet, juicy fig.

This is my dream breakfast, truly I felt like a goddess supping on ambrosia.

It’s interesting how young cheeses are mild, the character of the milk does’t emerge till they have aged. A good thing to bear in mind when you’re introducing a sceptic to goat’s cheese. Start ’em on something young.

The cheese I ate was from Siena, and I love the video I found on their blog of some very happy looking Italian goats and cheese makers! The company is Santa Margherita Formaggio and this is their Capra Naturale.
http://poderesantamargherita.blogspot.it/

We’re in Siena today so I will keep my eyes peeled for more Sienese cheese delights.