Tidbit: Hand-Stretched Burrata

Mozzarella House burrata / Photograph by Francine Zaslow, and styling by Maria del mar Sacasa/Ennis

Burrata doesn’t get the kind of obsessive adoration showered upon its more modest cousin, mozzarella, which has been mimeographed beyond recognition. But there’s a gentle-handed technique to every hand-stretched ball of burrata, done most deftly at Everett’s Mozzarella House.

Sharing a birthplace with the legendary cheese gives Puglia-born owner Giuseppe Argentieri, who bought Mozzarella House two years back, the advantage of recognizing the nuance imparted when a cheesemaker pasteurizes the cream himself. Thus, he sources cream from two small, North Shore dairies and vat pasteurizes in house. (Flash pasteurization kills the milk’s flavor, he insists.)

The difference is detected in its curd-filled center; bits of mozzarella and heavy cream hide beneath the dense cocoon of stretched mozzarella and melts into silk across the tongue. It needs little more than a bed of greens, like we’ve seen it at Bondir, or drizzled with a whisper of chestnut honey, as they plate it at Coppa.

Available at Mozzarella House, 11 Cazenove Plaza, Everett; 617-387-6810; mozzarellahouse.com or Salumeria Italiana, 151 Richmond St., Boston, 617-523-8743; salumeriaitaliana.com.