Formàdi salât
Formàdi salât is a cow's milk cheese with a hard texture, although softer than the so-called dairy cheese, with holes of different size, a color going from white to pale yellow, but without fissures. The preparation process is similar to the process used to make "donkey" cheese: milk coagulation, curd breaking and cooking, wrapping up of the product without pressing it, soaking for about 40 days into larch tubs containing the pickle, called salina and deriving from a mixture called madre. The story of formàdi salât dates back to the 1950s, when Mr. Giacomo Rugo from Enemonzo began its trading activity selling this excellent product door to door, in the evening or during his spare time, since his work in the countryside absorbed all his energies. Time has passed, and today the family-run business, managed by his son Giuseppe, sells this product which in the past was used as a food supply during the cold winter months, demonstrating how a special and particular product can derive from a subsistence economy. Giacomo Rugo began to make formàdi salât when he was young and when it was only one of the many products of the local agricultural and breeding activity. He inherited his first vat with the so-called salmueria (pickle, a special mixture of cream, milk, and salt) from his grandfather. Today, his son Giuseppe still uses this vat, a precious inheritance, and uses other vats made of larch timber, where he leaves the rounds of cheese coming from the valley cheese factories and the mountain pastures of Carnia (during the summer) to soak for weeks. These rounds are left to soak and cream and salt are added, and the pickle is mixed by hand, so that, day after day, the cheese acquires the taste and softness characterizing it for the intensity of taste and fragrance. After soaking in the pickle, the cheese gets carefully dried up. Its organoleptic features are a wet rind, a soft heart, marked holes, and a pale yellow color. The main feature of formàdi salât is exactly the pickle made by Rugo family, making this product a symbol of the tradition of Carnia, famous in Friuli-Venezia Giulia and in the adjacent regions. In order to taste and appreciate it better, you can eat it with hot boiled potatoes or steaming polenta.
