Image this. You’re on a wonderful vacation within the hills of Sardinia. There’s a cool breeze that tempers the Mediterranean solar beating down on you.
On the native farmhouse, an enthralling man provides you a few of his native, genuine Sardinian cheese. You are taking a chunk. It’s a powerful arduous cheese with a nutty aroma.
However what’s this?
It’s stuffed with maggots.
Dwelling, wriggling maggots.
No matter your response to the maggot cheese, the dairy farmer is nonplussed. As a result of he’s simply given you a slice of Sardinian delicacy Casu Marzu.
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Sardinia’s infamous reside maggot cheese just lately made waves on TikTok when journey influencer Amilotta was hospitalised after attempting a chunk.
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Casu Marzu (actually, "rotten cheese") is a controversial cheese. It was outlawed by the EU as a result of rules over the consumption of meals infested with parasites.
Guinness World Information even awarded it the “World’s Most Harmful Cheese” as “the maggots, as soon as consumed, can survive abdomen acid to move by means of the gut partitions, inflicting vomiting, stomach ache and bloody diarrhoea.”
Sellers may face fines as much as €50,000 if caught with Casu Marzu amongst their delicacies.
So that you’re not going to seek out it stocked on cabinets in Sardinian outlets, when you fancy attempting the funky fromage.
Sardinian journey blogger and vacation planner Claudia Tavani has solely come throughout a handful of vacationers prepared to strive the cheese. The primary was a traveller from Israel.
“I stored telling him this and it isn't even kosher,” she advised Euronews Tradition. However he insisted.
“We have been in Alghero. We went to a market and we needed to go above and past to seek out it. It was phrase of mouth till we managed to discover a shepherd that was promoting his cheese.”
“It is not one thing that they'll legally promote. So it was off-the-record hidden. And he tried just a little bit,” she says.
Why maggots?
What potential profit can there be to having your cheese infested with reside maggots?
The cheese is produced by permitting Sardinian wheels of Pecorino to get infested as cheese skipper flies lay their eggs in its cracks.
When the eggs hatch into maggots, the larvae begin to eat and digest the cheese they’re surrounded by. The impact of digestion breaks down the arduous cheese and turns it right into a supposedly creamy delight.
The observe of creating Casu Marzu has been round because the Historic Romans, suggests Giovanni Fancello, a Sardinian meals author.
“When a wheel turned, individuals solely needed to style the outcome to comprehend it didn’t want throwing away,” he says of the inevitable discovery of the maggoty delicacy.
In September, Sardinians have a good time Cabidanni - the brand new agricultural yr. It’s a protect from the Historic Greek and Jewish calendars. Ever since, the opening of a Casu Marzu wheel to recognise the top of the summer season and starting of a brand new yr has turn into a Sardinian custom.
“It's eaten as quickly because it kinds in late summer season and till the inventory is completed within the Fall,” Fancello advised Euronews Tradition. “There's hardly ever any preserved. When it's completed, there is no such thing as a extra.”
A reminder of easier occasions
Whereas it has been formally declared harmful, conventional Sardinians solely warning potential eaters if the maggots are useless.
“The transformation into Casu Marzu happens naturally. The fly chooses a wheel that's already compromised,” Fancello explains. The speculation pertains that on days when the Sirocco wind - a scorching gust arising from the Sahara - blows by means of to Sardinia, that’s when the perfect Casu Marzu is shaped.
Fancello is an enormous Casu Marzu fan and consuming it all the time takes him again to easier occasions.
“Contemporaries recognize it much less however it was a valuable commodity. I all the time used to eat it with gusto moreover my shepherd father. It has a spicy flavour that has digestive properties. Eaten after a hearty meal it digests instantly,” he says.
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