Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Non-cow's milk replacement for Parmesan cheese in Genovese pesto

Question

My family loves Genovese pesto and we'd started making our own (with varied success). One of our number has been diagnosed as intolerant to cow's milk. This rules out pretty much all shop-bought varieties, so we now have to take the homemade route seriously. To help us out, please can you suggest non-cow's milk cheeses that we could use instead of Parmesan?

Answer

Finding a non-cow subsitute for parmesan is a difficult task - Grana, the closest, is made from cow milk as well so it's no good.
You can try using Pecorino which is made from sheep milk, and has a slightly stronger flavour.
I've never tried it personally, but it's not rare in some regions of Italy to make pesto with pecorino, so it's definitely worth a try!

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