A few weeks ago, there was a cheese fair at the back of the old slaughterhouse here in Testaccio. Thirty cheesemakers set up stalls in two of the conference rooms that look out on to what was, from 1891 until 1975, Campo Boario, a 13-acre cattle market and trading area overlooked by a circular control tower. The cheese fair, on the other hand, was controlled from a long office table by a point-of-sale machine: €6 a ticket to taste cubes and slices of artisan cheese from all over Italy, with the option of buying them, too.
“Set out your stall” was one of my grandad’s favourite expressions, often used at night to remind us not only to lay out our school uniforms and pack our bags, but to get our thoughts ready for the next day. As a kid, I wished that laying out thoughts was as straightforward and satisfying as picking out socks and sharpening pencils. I still do. Maybe I should be running a market stall? Or maybe I should just admire and inhale the work of others. In the ex-slaughterhouse conference room, some cheesemakers had brought wooden cabinets, others crates, while many simply relied on stacking for height, the rounds and barrels of cheese like vertebrae on a spine. The ricotta-makers lined up their tubs side by side; the mozzarella-makers stood by tubs of bobbing balls; while caciocavallo-makers had poles, so their pot-bellied creations with tiny heads could hang like decorative teardrops.
