{"id":19133,"date":"2023-06-12T07:15:29","date_gmt":"2023-06-12T11:15:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ethnojunkie.com\/?p=19133"},"modified":"2023-06-12T07:15:29","modified_gmt":"2023-06-12T11:15:29","slug":"mozzlab","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ethnojunkie.com\/?p=19133","title":{"rendered":"MozzLab"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are few things about which I am a purist. (One is not ending a sentence with a preposition. See first sentence.)<\/p>\n

Another is the pronunciation of the versatile and much beloved fresh pasta filata cheese, mozzarella.<\/p>\n

Now, I\u2019m not advocating that we all embrace the charming Sicilian-American argot, \u201cmootzadell\u201d like the neighborhood paisans I remember affectionately from my yout \u2013 er, youth.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a long \u014d in there. Mozzarella rhymes with \u201cTotes umbrella\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cMatzarella\u201d just cheeses me off. To my ears that sounds like a diminutive female Jewish cracker.<\/p>\n

Now that that\u2019s out of the way, let\u2019s get down to the real subject of this post.<\/p>\n

(Click on any image to view it in high resolution.)<\/em>
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\nMozzLab at 502 Henry St, Brooklyn, is a contemporary cheese shop specializing in hand stretched mozzarella made fresh daily (along with its cousins, buffalo burrata, treccia and stracciatella) plus a few other cheeses as well as an array of Italian sandwiches incorporating them, a tempting selection of antipasti, and a mini Italian market.<\/p>\n

I had heard about their \u201cMozzarella Bagels\u201d, a sandwich that includes prosciutto, speck (a type of cured, smoky ham), and mortadella in which bagel-shaped mozz stands in for the bread. I planned to get just the dairy part as a surprise for a vegetarian friend who loves mozzarella but the hitch was that they don\u2019t sell the cheesy toroid by itself. I\u2019m unsure why fulfilling the request was so daunting; I tried explaining what I wanted in English, then to the staff in my defective Spanish (hablaban espa\u00f1ol pero no ingl\u00e9s) and finally in fractured Italian to the owner (the Big Cheese?) who was adroitly stretching fresh mozz with great panache before my eyes. But when I referred to him as \u201cIl Maestro\u201d, he smiled and made a couple for me as a special order while I watched.<\/p>\n

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\nThe first photo shows what I did to mine when I got it home (those sandwiches looked too good); the second shows the plain unadorned version I gave to my friend.<\/p>\n

Everything I tasted from MozzLab was top quality and the atmosphere projected the warmth and camaraderie you\u2019d hope for from a local business and its regulars. Kind of reminded me of the handful of Italian specialty shops from my neighborhood as a kid.
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When is a bagel with mozzarella a mozzarella bagel? Read on…. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3336,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,31,18],"tags":[63],"class_list":["post-19133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-good-eats","category-home-cookin","category-shopping","tag-italian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethnojunkie.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethnojunkie.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethnojunkie.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethnojunkie.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3336"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethnojunkie.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19133"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/ethnojunkie.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19148,"href":"https:\/\/ethnojunkie.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19133\/revisions\/19148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethnojunkie.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethnojunkie.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethnojunkie.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}