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10/28/2004 Archived Entry: "Mozzarella Madness"

Do I miss being on the radio? I am asked this daily. In general, the answer is no. However, last Saturday I went berserk over a story in the New York Times, and I did indeed wish I had the radio platform to do my venting. It seems that the New York City health department is insisting that freshly made mozzarella be kept at a temperature below 41 degrees. In other words, they want the cheese refrigerated as soon as it is made. This ruins the cheese. You can use it only for cooking, if that. You certainly would not want to eat it for its own handmade, beautiful self.

As far as I know, we have never lost a citizen to toxic mozzarella. That mozzarella has been kept at room temperature for centuries (in Italy) with no health problems associated with it does not cut it with our young, overly earnest health inspectors. “It’s a new world,” as my grandmother would say. It seems the old-timer inspectors have some respect for cultural traditions and they look the other way when Italian markets keep their mozzarella in trays filled with water at room temperature. The new young inspectors insist on the letter of the law.

So here’s an anecdote: When I first moved back to Brooklyn six years ago, some of my Manhattan friends, disdainful of my becoming a bridge and tunnel boy, asked me why I did it. My only partly facetious answer was that there is a store down the street from me that makes mozzarella three times a day and knows enough not to refrigerate it.