On a recent trip to Sicily I came across a cheese in the south-west, between Trapani and Agrigento, that was new to me. It's called vastedda. It isn't much to look at, but it has great qualities when it comes to eating it. It's what's called a stretched curd cheese, made from the milk of sheep native to the Valle de Belice. You have to use sheep's milk for vastedda because only sheep's milk will take on the form of a stringy paste that gives the cheese its distinctive quality.

The style of production varies from region to region and from maker to maker, but is basically as follows: the milk is curdled with kid rennet and the curd is broken with a rounded club and drained. When it is considered mature by the master cheesemaker, it is hand worked and placed into a mould, called the vastedda. This is where the cheese gets its name. After a couple of hours, it is ready to eat. That may seem a very short time to mature a cheese but, unlike a lot of cheese, the fresher Vastedda is, the better. It is quite like a mozzarella, but more chewy.

The most common way to eat it is sliced, with a splash of olive oil and some olives. I really enjoyed the way that Vittorio in Porto Palo served it (I know I am always banging on about him, but he is a total maestro in the kitchen). He heated it on a flat pan so that it started to sweat and go slightly soft, then drizzled a beautiful olive oil over the top and added the olives.

I have never seen this cheese anywhere in the UK, so I shall be talking to Marco from Gastronomica to see if he can source me some, and will report back in due course. But if in the meantime you happen to be on a trip to Sicily, be sure to check it out. And don't be put off by the unappealing look.