Balloon Bread & Maggot Cheese | Bizarre Foods With Andrew Zimmern | Travel Channel

Andrew is in Sardinia, getting an up-close taste of centuries-old food traditions. He joins trained artisans in making one of Sardinia’s defining foods— traditional pane carasau. Then, he heads to the rugged but picturesque Sardinian mountains, relishing in the incredibly rare array of cheeses at his fingertips. There’s casu martzu, a sheep milk cheese that is home to many-a-maggot, and callu de cabrettu, a cheese that grows inside a young goat’s stomach lining.

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in the mountains you find the True Heart
of Sardinia isolated from outside
influence tailored to a tough way of
life it’s where they invented and still
make one of sardinia’s defining Foods
pan carasa is bread that starts as a
doughy hot air balloon it ends up as a
thin crisp cracker-like bread that will
keep for 6 months perfect for Mountain
Shepherds to carry in their
packs I am absolutely 100% convinced you
can taste history of a people in a
culture through the food and if this
doesn’t prove it to you I don’t know
what does it starts as a ball of
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dough even when it’s pressed flat the
dough is so light if you place it just
right in a wood burning oven it bubbles
up separate the two paper thin layers
and bake each one a second time pan
carasel means twice baked bread we love
it this is amazing really amazing
but just the quality of them just the
flavor the people on this little
assembly line represent more than a
hundred years of experience that’s why
they make something look easy that’s
really not uh-oh
uh-oh
see it’s not as easy as it looks
seriously you have to cut the bread
quickly or it fuses back together and
you back up the assembly line the L say
to come other
but inside the oven is where the magic
happens okay here we go all
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right now you have
to to get an idea what this is like
imagine trying to flip a balloon on a
bed of broken
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glassf well let’s not get too carried
away thank you you’re being very
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the mountains of Sardinia are rough and
rugged this is where generations of
tough Islanders held out against any and
all wouldbe
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Invaders even today it’s no picnic
trying to reach the people who live here
I’ve often said that all food tastes
better the harder you have to work for
it yep that’s all we have to do in order
to meet uh a go a real one here in these
mountains I hope to get a taste of
Sardinian tradition I’ve wanted to try
for
years kasum marzu often insultingly
referred to as maggot cheese the real
stuff is made only in Sardinia and it’s
now illegal to sell even here but the
tradition is still alive and well in
remote mostly unvisited places this is
like Lord of the Rings meets
1926 Appalachia this unbelievable look
and the sun is coming
upia Andrew nice to meet you Giovani
Gabus has lived in these mountains all
his life Giovani is a goat
herder this is his home year round a
single room where the only source of
heat is a fire burning right in the
middle of the floor the smoke is Handy
for aging cheese and meat
giovan’s been aging this wheel of
caprino made from goats milk for about
two months now incredible look at the
mold and the cracking on
this for him the best thing to do it is
to eat it rather than to talk about it
point taken I’m going to learn that
Giovani is utterly unimpressed by the
whole TV thing more so than anybody I’ve
ever met but I want to learn firsthand
how he lives and how he makes his
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cheese milk goes almost directly from a
goat’s udder to a pot on the fire then
renit is added and it’s stirred as the
milk
separates I’m trying to be helpful here
he said if he doesn’t understand how can
I tell him what to do a lifetime of
solitary living means that Giovani
doesn’t really explain he just does does
so if you want to know what the lesson
learned here is I’m a really crappy
cheese
maker Giovani uses bare hands in near
boiling liquid to shape the curds into
what will become wheels of cheese these
will age for a couple of months here in
giovan’s Smoky cottage for lunch we’ll
be eating cheese that’s already aged and
that’s had flies lay their eggs inside
it giovan’s neighbor Franchesco drops in
as we’re setting the table for lunch
including a whole cure pig’s leg that’s
their air dried Mountain ham think
Pudo along with that twice baked
Sardinian bread and this this is for me
the most interesting cheese in the whole
world kasu marzu starts out as just
another wheel of
cheese but months later you don’t slice
into it you cut the top off and lift it
off like a lid one
two three wow oo very ripe that is some
stinky cheese and it’s alive with
maggots they’re larae of a fly that lays
eggs in the cheese when it’s very young
thousands of them have been eating and
then excreting into this cheese
centuries ago probably by accident
someone tasted maggot infested cheese
and decided wow it’s actually better
after being flavored and softened by
passing through the digestive system of
the larae what’s the best way to eat
this do you scoop some of the hard stuff
from the inside the soft from from the
middle
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bothan suggesting the best way to eat it
is just to place it in your mouth okay
another point taken even like that just
place it in your
mouth by the way it’s a good sign that
the maggots are still alive dead maggots
would indicate that the kasum marzu
would be unsafe to
eat Wow have you had this before not yet
it’s so ammoniated
it actually scorches your tongue a
little bit but you want to keep eating
it this is like a piece of lurger or
blue cheese that you’ve left for two
months in your refrigerator and
forgotten about and you smell it and
throw it away that’s what this tastes
like it’s very strong very ammoniated
the texture is incredible
though Giovani gives his longest speech
of the day to let me know kasum marzu is
you guessed it an aphrodesiac he’s
asking if you’re married because if
you’re married then tonight is going to
be your
nicey wow it’s I mean it’s
severe it’s too
much I like it now you might think that
the kasum marzu was the most imposing
edible we encountered all day not even
close one of the most shocking Foods
I’ve ever tasted is created inside of
these the stomachs of kid goats and I’m
about to eat a cheese created inside the
stomach lining
itself says the goat renit mhm renit
naturally exists in a part of the
stomach lining containing enzymes that
break down milk you can make cheese by
adding a little renit to your milk but
here they add a little milk to the
stomach and it makes a kind of a cheese
prized is the finest Dairy delicacy in
the mountains the cheese has been aging
inside this stomach for about 40 days
and of course the best thing about it is
that it’s got a couple hairs in every
bite it’s part of the taste that’s what
really gives also The
Taste oh my
gosh so delicious that’s insane that’s
just like fat that’s turned into
cheese that’s what it tastes like you
know Tallow I got to tell you the smell
in here is almost burning your nose with
ammonia this is ammonia mixed with
edible
wax that is gasoline pneumonia mixed
with edible wax in this ascending scale
of powerful cheeses I think I just went
over the top