I have a cheesy confession to make. I love cheese, but while I enjoy French cheeses, not to mention Spanish, Greek, Georgian and so on, my heart is first and foremost given to the Italian ones. And so when I saw a familiar sight – loads of bocconcini swimming in whey and twinkling at me from Dominion’s cheese counter – I gleefully pounced and brought them home with me, looking forward to a treat. I tasted quite a few supermarket Italian cheese imitations back in Europe and some of them were quite good, so my hopes were high.

I didn’t even bother to check whether I had any tomatoes for Caprese salad, sure that my bocconcini woudn’t last till dinner-time. I was in for a big surprise though. Their texture proved to be rubbery and unexciting, their flavour – almost completely neutral, well described by the French word fade. In fact they were incredibly boring. Bocconcini stayed in the fridge for three days and were gone only because nothing edible can last long with two full-grown males in the house.

So I felt a need to satisfy my Italian cheese craving and decided to revisit Little Italy and its ‘Il Centro Del Formaggio’ (The Cheese Centre, 578 College Street) where I had previously bought a lovely Gorgonzola to accompany our first Canadian icewine (that was a fine Vidal Sawmill Creek by the way – and the result was a perfect harmony!) but as I had been in a hurry then I didn’t have time to have a good look around at the shelves.

Being more prudent this time I tried bocconcini before buying them. Uh-oh, the same old story. So I bought a Canadian-made Santa Lucia mozzarella instead – seeing that there was no Italian (they only sell expensive but oh-so-luscious Italian mozzarella di buffala and then only in summer). The texture was definitely an improvement but the taste, while much better than that of the bocconcini’s, for me still lacked a little something… As Marcella Bornino, who runs this shop explained, “Here people eat this cheese in salads with lots of seasoning, and they like it this way.”

Still I am not complaining. I made a salad of my mozzarella, translucent slices of prosciutto, sweet cherry tomatoes and fragrant basil leaves drizzling it with lovely green-gold extra virgin olive oil. I bought there some really good Calabrian pecorino too and besides Marcella tipped me off that every Saturday morning they sell freshly-made ricotta calda, and fresh ricotta is usually something completely over the top. Not to mention a good selection of other cheeses (non-Italian included), antipasti and cold cuts. So I’ll be back.

P.S. And in the meanwhile there is the whole field of Canadian cheeses to explore. I’ve heard about Dragon’s Breath and Bleu Benedictin etc., but haven’t seen them anywhere so any help will be greatly appreciated. What are your favourite Canadian cheeses and where do I find them?

photo from mozzco.com