Chapter 11. Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
Note: At left, there's a slide show of our visit to the Parma cheese factory, and a slide show on how to make pici pasta. Also, if you are a first-time visitor, go to the left at archives, click on July 17, for the first chapter.
When I was a second grader, I would stop at my Italian grandmother's house for an after-school snack before going to my own home.
The snack usually consisted of a parmigiano cheese sandwich. Now, I am sure everyone thinks of this cheese as something you sprinkle on pasta dishes or blending into soups. But you haven't lived until you have eaten a parmigiano cheese sandwich, two slices of crusty Italian bread, lavishly buttered, then filled with several thin slices of the cheese.
How good is that?
That's why the one thing I wanted to do on our trip to Italy was to visit the Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese factory in Parma. The town was only a few miles away from our hotel in Reggio-Emilia, and on the first morning in Italy, we were in a taxi headed for Parma.
It was 8 am., and we were joined in the cheese production room by several ladies whose husbands were attending business meetings.
The milk truck had already arrived, having picked up the morning milkings from neighboring farms surrounding Parma, Reggio-Emilia, Modena, Bologna and Mantua. We were taken into the main production mixing area, spotlessly clean, white walls, red tile floors, slippery and wet. Workers were dressed in clean white coveralls and had already gotten an early start.
The morning's stock of milk is mixed with skimmed milk, pumped into copper lined vats and heated. Whey and calf rennet (an enzyme taken from the stomach of calves) is added which breaks down the milk
into tiny pieces, then left to curdle. The curd is cooked, and then settles in these vats, then raised, collected and compacted using muslim or cheesecloth, separated in two, now called twins, then dumped into stainless steel round forms.
For the next 20-25 days, the cheese wheels are soaked in a salt brine, then aged on a shelf from 1-3 years before going to market.
There are some Publix markets where in the cheese and wine sections, a cheese guru in a funny hat holds forth at the cheese counter, doling out samples on a toothpick. In the Killearn store, there is one of these cheese wheels, and if you look at it carefully, you will see a tough outside rind with lots of markings.
Our guide in Parma told us the markings on the rind tells the history of that particular wheel – the day it was first processed, how long it was in the brine, how long it aged on the shelf in the aging room. It also will tell you which cow the milk came from, which farm, which provence, which day the cow at the grass in which field, and the name of the cow.
The factory has a small retail shop, and as we sampled some of the cheese, the shop was doing a brisk business. I bought a sizable piece of cheese, shrink wrapped for travel, and hoped to enjoy it when we got home. Alas, through the next three weeks of changing temperatures, sometimes in a refrigerator for a few days, then in hot baggage, in the car trunk, back and forth, by the time we got it home, it didn't look appetizing.
How tragic was that?
Evan more tragic were reports of the earthquake in this region in May of this year. It was reported that 300,000 wheels were destroyed, from which 600,000 wheels fell from the shelves in the aging rooms. The other 300,000 wheels only sustained minor damage
It has been said that the cheese produced today in this area can track its origins to the 13th Century, beginning in Reggio-Emilia.
Also at left, a slide show on how to make pici pasta.
Next chapter on Friday Aug. 17
