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Truly one of the world's finest and most versatile blue cheeses, name-controlled Gorgonzola is named for a town in the region of Lombardy in northern Italy near Milan where it was first made, aged, and sold. In terms of how it is made, Gorgonzola is closely related to a cheese known as Stracchino or Crescenza and in fact, is sometimes still called stracchino di gorgonzola on its home turf. This is an important reference because it has to do with how both of these cheeses came to be in the first place. Stracchino is derived from stracco, a word in the Lombard dialect meaning "tired," and refers here to the milk from dairy cattle that make their annual trek down from their summer home in mountain pastures. This bovine migration, known as transhumance, is an ancient ritual played out in cheesemaking regions all over Europe in areas where the cows spend their summers grazing on pristine alpine pastures and need to be brought down to the lowlands before the snows of winter arrive, and then back up in the spring. Wherever this journey of milk cows and men takes place, the problem of excess milk presents itself. In the case of Gorgonzola, the milk surplus in the spring and autumn was more than could reasonably be consumed and so naturally, it was turned into cheese. Originally, Gorgonzola was first made by adding rennet to milk from the evening milking, suspending the milk in a cloth sack, and allowing the whole thing to hang there overnight. By morning, a great deal of the whey would have drained off and the remaining curds would have cooled and started to ripen. Also, unbeknownst to the first cheesemakers to try it, indigenous blue mold spores penetrated the sack during the night and entered the fresh, warm curds, beginning the bluing process for which the cheese is famous. The next day, the curds were placed in molds and the fresh morning milk would be added right on top of them, and the cheesemaking process would be carried out. Very likely, those first efforts left the hapless cheesemakers horrified at the moldy cheese. Eventually, however, as they grew to like the flavor brought by the mold and as they realized there was nothing they could do about it anyway, they began to encourage the mold growth, and the rest, as they say, is history. Today, of course, Gorgonzola is made in gleaming clean stainless steel factories -- both large and small -- and the formation of the mold is not only encouraged but it is also highly controlled. No longer relying on the molds that are naturally present in the air (which probably don't survive in the sanitary cheesemaking facilities anyway), the curds are inoculated with specific cultures. Additionally, stainless steel or copper needles are used to pierce the cheese to facilitate even and sure mold growth. These channels for mold growth also speed up the maturing time by providing little open highways for the formation of the bluish-green streaks of mold. Relying on natural mold formation in the past required a year or more of aging in the traditional caves, whereas modern methods mean that Gorgonzola today is typically aged between three and six months. One or two very good versions of Gorgonzola are made in this country, and several excellent ones are available from Italy. Gorgonzola, terrific on its own with fresh fruit, nuts, honey, crusty bread, and hearty red wine, is also a wonderful cheese to enhance salads, dressings, stuffing for pasta, chicken, and veal, and is even called for in desserts, again mostly with fruit and/or honey. For a hearty and delicious salad, try mixing Gorgonzola with yogurt, lemon juice, salt & pepper, and olive oil and applying it to full-flavored greens.