Her Majesty the Buffalo Mozzarella

I still remember the first time a whole mozzarella di bufala was placed in front of me, unsliced, sitting in its own milky bath like something too precious to be called merely "cheese." It was in a trattoria outside Caserta, at a table with a red-checked cloth and a view of water buffalo grazing in the distance. I cut into it, and it sighed — that soft, unmistakable release of whey that Italians call "crying." I understood, in that instant, why this cheese has a majesty all its own.This book was born from that afternoon, and from the many afternoons that followed: mornings spent in dairies before dawn, conversations with casari whose hands moved faster than their words, and long lunches where the only proper response to a good mozzarella is silence, followed by more mozzarella.What you hold is not a scientific treatise, nor a tourist pamphlet, but something closer to a love letter — one written for readers who already adore Italy, who understand that food here is never just food, and who want to know the full story behind the white dome that has conquered tables from London to Los Angeles.We will walk together through marshland and monastery, through DOP regulations and dinner tables, through legend and laboratory. We will meet the buffalo herself, an animal too often overlooked in favor of her famous product. And we will end, as every good Italian meal does, with the simple pleasure of eating well.Welcome, then, to the court of Her Majesty.— Andrew Brenner