Meats and cured meats

Garganica goat

Garganica goat: the long-haired black goat of the Gargano and its dried musciska

Jet-black coat, forelock, beard and twisted horns: the Garganica is an old Gargano breed that roams free through woods and up rock faces. Its milk becomes canestrato and cacioricotta; its leanest meat becomes musciska, strips dried with chilli and wild fennel. A Slow Food Presidium backed by the Gargano National Park keeps the breed and its foods going.

• A hardy browser of holly, thistles and cliff grass, always raised free-range
• Musciska comes in 20-30 cm strips, air-dried for about a week on wooden racks
• Its canestrato is crumbly, smells of grass and dried fruit, and grows sharper with age

How to enjoy it. Eat musciska as it is, strip by strip, the way shepherds did on the move; serve young canestrato at the table and grate the aged one. The cheeses follow the goats' milking season, mainly spring and summer.

Production areas

Apulia

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