which is to say, like I simply dove off a salt-stained dock

فرشلي  is ironic, thinking about water buffalo invest a lot of their time in the mud. The pets obtained their name from constantly they spend immersed in water, which they do to regulate their body temperature as they lack sweat glands. They even have cloven unguis to provide traction when tromping around mucky riverbeds.

If you're having trouble picturing them, you're not the only one. Somewhere along the line, very early American settlers obtained it in their heads to begin calling bison (the wooly brown humpbacked animals that graze our western meadows) "buffalo," in spite of having extremely few similarities to the black types with ram-like horns that come from India. This type, referred to as the Oriental or river buffalo (not to be perplexed with the African buffalo-- remain with me), has been around for centuries, as well as you're still more most likely to find cultured milk products (think: paneer, yogurt) made of buffalo milk rather than cow's milk in India today. Just how and also when this types got to Italy and changed right into the mozzarella kingpin called the Mediterranean buffalo is extremely challenged, though the majority of accounts claim it happened someplace in between the second and also seventh centuries as well as had something todo with their hardiness as draft pets. (They also ultimately wound up in South America, where a recently established buffalo milk cheese industry is on the surge today.).

Our lack of ability to recognize these creatures in a line-up has not maintained food people from boosting their products to cult standing. Buffalo mozzarella has actually been referred to as the white whale of the cheese globe, and much ink has actually been splashed over Proustian first experiences with it and impressive hunts for it.