Where to Find the Freshest Mozzarella Fresh mozzarella, a key ingredient in this week's City Kitchen column, can be a true delight, one that some lucky cooks can take for granted. The question is, where can you find it? In Italy, it's not a problem. Local cheese shops produce it daily. They stretch fresh curds by hand into a variety of shapes, and the custom there is not to even think of eating it more than a few hours after it's been made. Actually, Italians call the cow's milk version fior di latte, reserving the moniker "mozzarella" for the kind made from the milk of domesticated water buffalo, mozzarella di bufala. Both are wonderfully sweet, creamy, soft and full of real dairy flavor. Shoppers here should be wary, though, when purchasing this imported mozzarella, as it has very a short shelf life and can be disappointingly sour-tasting if it has languished a week or more. On the East Coast, we are fortunate to have lots of Italian-American shops where the tradition of mozzarella-making continues, albeit mostly with cow's milk. It is still best to buy it fresh the day you are going to eat it; otherwise, older cheese is better cooked, in lasagna or pizza, for example. Elsewhere in the United States, options may be more limited. It is always good to buy directly from a good cheese shop if possible. Water-packed supermarket tubs can often be rubbery; choose vacuum-packed cheeses for better flavor and texture. For the best mail-order option, try the mozzarella made by hand in Dallas by Paula Lambert of the Mozzarella Company. This Texas belle spent years in Italy studying cheesemaking before returning to her hometown, determined to introduce the joys of Italian cheese to her fellow Texans. As she explained to me, her cheeses are made with both rennet and special cultures, which convert the milk's lactose into lactic acid. This, she says, produces a much fuller flavor than the direct-acidification method some cheesemakers use. And the vacuum pack gives it a shelf life of 3 to 4 weeks. Wherever you buy your fresh mozzarella, it will always taste best served at room temperature.