A Guide to the Best of Southern California : ALL-AMERICAN TRADITIONS : Starting From Scratch . . .

If your idea of mozzarella is the hard, stringy, tasteless cheese you put on pizza, you’re not alone. When Virgilio Cicconi started making fresh mozzarella--soft, cakey and sweet-sour--at his Italcheese factory in Gardena, the FDA told him he couldn’t call it that because its moisture content was too high. Only after several years and testimony from Italian cheese experts did the government agency relent.

Cicconi wasn’t always a mozzarella maker. When he came to the United States in 1964 from San Benedetto del Tronto, on Italy’s Adriatic coast, he took up angling for swordfish off Catalina. But he was forced to find another line of work in 1983 when overfishing dried up the swordfish banks. “Why don’t you make cheese?” asked his sister, who still lives in Italy. “The stuff I eat when I visit you tastes like soap.”

After eight years and countless trials, the red, white and green containers of Italcheese’s fresh mozzarella have become familiar supermarket fare. Besides three sizes of mozzarella (from smallest to largest: bocconcini, ovaline and morbidella ), Cicconi makes a smoked mozzarella--roughly the equivalent of Italian scamorza --as well as mascarpone and ricotta.

Italcheese mozzarella is available throughout Southern California at Irvine Ranch Market, Ralphs, Vons, Mrs. Gooch’s Natural Ranch Markets, Bristol Farms, Hughes Markets, Westward Ho Markets, Alpha Beta, Pioneer Boulangerie and Gelson’s Markets.