Torta del Casar D.O.P. “Pastoralia”

According to Ferràn Adrià: "Torta del Casar is a work of art". The cheese is a work of art and therefore it must be one of the great ambassadors of the Extremadura region. Of course , this is important , but for me what is more important is all that lies behind it. This region is plain of steppes, crossed from northwest to southeast by the ""Sierra de Fuentes"", with the sandy shallow soil, low fertility , a continental climate with long hot summers and short mild winters. It is the story of shepherds and transhumance, hours of solitude, of tradition and memory, milk and rennet. It is the history of the Casar. It is not only of today it is of the past and previous centuries of Vias de la Plata, of Romans and Arabs , of Castilian Kings, of Sancho IV and Reales Audiencias, of the times when cheese was used as a bargaining chip. White and yellowish cheese. The use of this vegetable rennet extracted from the Cynara Cardunculus thistle, together with the knowledge of the master dairymen, generates an intense proteolysis during the maturing process when the rind is not yet fully formed, which causes the cheeses not to support their weight and tend to flatten in the center and swell at the sides, acquiring an atypical shape that reminded the Casar de Cáceres cheesemakers of a cake made of bread, hence the name Torta del Casar.

The result is a cheese with a thin, semi-hard rind, its main characteristic is its very creamy consistency, which means that at certain times of aging it must be wrapped to prevent the ivory white paste from overflowing. It has small cracks in the still soft crust. With milky and vegetable aromas, with an intense and developed taste, it melts in the mouth. Slightly salty and slightly bitter taste, characteristic due to the use of vegetable rennet.

Discover in this video the properties of the Torta del Casar and how it is recommended to be consumed (the video is in Spanish but we recommend watching it to understand how to cut it !)