Cheesemaking far from a lost art at Sugo Caffe Italia

It's a nightly transformation.

"Last night, this was milk," says cheesemaker Paul Campanella as he cuts firm curds into a large pink basin, getting ready to transform it into fresh mozzarella.

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He makes cheese every night in the kitchen at Inglewood's Sugo Caffe Italia, creating a steady supply for menu items at Sugo as well as Without Papers Pizza upstairs.

Campanella grew up in a village of about 6,000 a couple hours from Rome, and has been making cheese for about 35 years, when he stops to count.

"That's what they do over there, make cheese," he says.

"That's what I've done all my life."

Campanella started making cheese again when he came to Calgary about a decade ago. He got to know chef Angelo Contrada when he supplied cheese to the restaurants through White Gold, the now-defunct cheese company he co-owned.

"They'd call and ask if I can bring 20 pails of mozzarella to last a couple weeks, and I'd say, 'Why wouldn't I just bring you a couple pails every day?' That's how we do it in Italy — we make the cheese at night, and in the morning it goes to the markets. The fresh meat and produce doesn't last for weeks, so why should the cheese?"

Campanella now makes cheese exclusively for Sugo and Without Papers, stretching fresh mozzarella, burrata, ricotta and provolone (which is aged about a month and a half) every night, and sleeping during the day.

He uses 56 litres of milk per batch, all sourced from Vital Green Farms in Picture Butte, and does four batches at a time to make about 60 pounds of cheese a night.

They go through it all.

"Make the story about the food, please, not about me," Campanella says, deftly stretching and twisting his mozzarella into balls and small braids.

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"The food is what it's all about. They make everything here — the pasta is made from scratch, all the sauces, all the preserves."

It's true. There are few eateries that have window sills lined with tomato, zucchini and cucumber plants leaning toward the sun in large olive oil cans, waiting to be transported to the owners' back yards, with preserves lining the walls alongside family photos and their own resident Italian cheesemaker.

"Big companies use chemicals and different agents, like calcium chloride, to make the process quicker, or to prolong the shelf life," Campanella says, of mass-produced cheeses that are more common on restaurant menus.

"I don't want to do that. Why do that when you can make good, simple cheese? And know that the person eating it is happy? It will all come back to you."

'You'll remember the cheese'

After making a batch of fresh mozzarella purely out of local, organic milk, rennet and a bacterial culture, Campanella stores the pure white balls in a large bin and packs a couple for me to take home, covered with distilled water.

"Make my nonna's caprese salad with it, please," he says.

"Tear open the cheese and let a little of the milk inside dribble out onto your plate, then cut open a tomato and let its juice spill out and mix with the milk. Drizzle it with good olive oil and use bread to mop up the juices. When you eat it, you're going to think of who made it — you might not remember my face, or things that I say, but you'll remember the cheese."