I can't believe we have not seen this before....

Success!!! Today we headed over to the mercato near the Medici fortezza that is held every Wednesday. As I mentioned before, it is mostly clothing and household items (curtains, sheets etc.). Neither of us being the types to buy clothing from a man selling underwear out of the back of a van or having our own apartment to furnish, we have only been over there a handful of times. Today we went over with the purpose of buying some mozzarella di bufala from the men from Napoli (Naples). Sure enough, in an area away from the main market there were a number of vendors selling various kinds of food products: cheeses, olives, vegetables, fish (smelled a little fishy), as well as already cooked products (porketta, rotisserie chickens, calamari, french fries). We couldn't believe that we had never seen this before!! Of course I forgot the camera, but we plan to go back next week. It is no where near as big as the markets that every other town/city in Italy have but it is better than nothing!

The mozzarella di bufala was sooo good (as it should be for 14 Euros a kilo!!). We did however splurge on the D.O.P. (Certified Provenance Brand EEC) version. The bag pictured below is 500g so it cost us 7Euros......


.....But look at the size of it!........


According to my grams to pounds converter, this is more than 1.1 pounds of cheese!

It was seriously one of the best cheeses I have ever had. Not at all like the regular Mozzarella that you get at supermarkets which is rather tasteless. This has a salty taste to it. I was reading here, that two distinguishing characteristics of mozzarella di bufala are 1) it's unique distinct taste and 2) it's soft moist texture. This particular mozzarella is a lot more flavorful than other types because of the high amount of milk fat.

For dinner tonight, we had a Caprese salad that I made along with some steaks that Reed made.



We have tons of the mozzarella leftover which is a good thing since we have some pizza dough thawing. That will be for tomorrow! Tasting the cheese today, we can't wait for our month in the Naples area. We are still trying to figure out the best place to stay since we do not want to be living in Naples and we won't have a car. We are leaning towards the Sorrento-area. One thing is for sure, we can't wait to have the pizza from Naples. One place I really want to eat at is L'Antica Pizzeria Da Michele which has been in business since 1870 (and happened to be featured in the book Eat, Love, Pray).

Tomorrow: train tickets to the Veneto and home-made pizza!