You can't hear the cheese if your hands are deaf

One of the auction items at last year's Carnevale event to benefit the Rehoboth Foodie/Touch of Italy Scholarship Fund was a day trip to the Bronx with Bronx native and Touch of Italy owner Bob Ciprietti. Among the winners were Drs. Dan Cuozzo and Jeff Cooper, accompanied by their respective wives, Susan and Benedette. I wouldn't miss one of these trips for the world, so I had the pleasure of tagging along.

One of the stops in this authentic Little Italy was Casa Della Mozzarella near the corner of 187th Street and Arthur Avenue in the Bronx. When Touch of Italy first opened, Casa Della Mozzarella owner Orazio Carciotto generously passed his secrets on to Ciprietti's mozzarella makers, and fresh mozzarella is still made daily in his inimitable style here in the Cape Region. 

Proper mozzarella making is an extremely tactile process. As he manually works the cheese curds in the boiling water (yes, bare-handed in boiling water), Orazio can feel when the cheese is ready to be pulled into little ping pong-size balls (bocconcini), larger balls or braided like challah bread. During our hallowed audience in the "mozz room" (pronounced "mutz room" there at 187th and Arthur) one of the onlookers asked why Orazio wasn't wearing gloves. The venerable cheesemaker replied that the cheese tells him - through his fingers - when it's ready. What the onlooker didn't know was that Orazio obsessively washes his hands, and has made so much mozzarella in boiling water that he actually has no fingerprints. Yup - you read that right. No fingerprints.

Casa Della Mozzarella follows every food sanitation procedure to the letter, but sometimes it's natural to wonder how our food remains wholesome and safe during the often convoluted journey to your table. Restaurants - the good ones, that is - follow a logical sequence of food safety procedures known as HACCP (Hazard Analysis & Critical Control Points), and one subject addressed therein is the use of gloves when handling food. Interestingly, in spite of what one might think, the state health inspector for two of my former restaurants maintained that gloves can give workers a false sense of security when handling non-food items such as money, doorknobs, cans, boxes, etc. The next time you order from a carryout, food truck or a stand at an outdoor event, watch the preparer's hands. Does he or she handle your money and make change wearing the same gloves that touched your corn dog or taco? In the words of my health inspector, "the only things those gloves keep clean are their hands." 

Of course, that doesn't mean that gloves aren't important. When I made my fried chicken at one of our Carnevale events, I was in constant contact with raw chicken and the flour dredge. One of Touch of Italy's chefs repeatedly reminded me - loudly - to wear gloves and a cap during the event. The last thing I heard when exiting the kitchen with 200 raw chicken wings was, "...and don't touch anything other than the food without changing those gloves!" Now I know why I write about food and don't cook it for a living. 

Most food sanitation inspectors will agree that frequent hand washing is probably more important than wearing gloves, depending on the individual situation - such as working fresh cheese in actively boiling water using freshly washed hands, for example. When I attended the ServSafe Program during my restaurant ownership days, I'll never forget my instructor saying, "Each and every rule you will learn about food sanitation, safety and foodborne illness was created out of an actual situation where people got sick - or worse. We don't make this stuff up." 

But there are only so many health inspectors, and much of this boils down to trust. You trust the server or line cook or salad prep person or fry cook or expeditor to care enough about his job to scrub his hands every time he grabs a doorknob or visits the rest room. You rely on the restaurant owner or manager to operate in her best interest by making it clear to employees that the business - and their livelihoods - depend on vigilant food-handling. 

Happily, all this attention to science and reality is working, and chances are good that your restaurant experiences will be nontoxic. In fact, ongoing epidemiological studies have shown that food served by the major fast-food chains is safer than that prepared in your own home. It's no secret that the customers' sense of well-being is vital to success in this business of eating. As a result, restaurateurs don't talk much about food safety and sanitation. But the good ones think about it all the time.