Chris & Kelly's Travel Adventures
For two of our girls...Tabby and Sarah this post is for you! Today from Bologna we took a food tour w/wine pairings. This was a 10 hour day in the Emilia-Romagna region, famous for Parmesan-Regiano cheese, Balsamic Vinegar and Parma Ham. Our 1st stop was the making of the Parmesan-Regiano cheese. While you can find a version of it world-wide, Italy has a Designated Origin of Product (DPO) seal to guarantee that every ingredient, every step completed toward the finished product is done in Emilia-Romagna. This cheese (one pot full) only contains 4 ingredients, 160 lbs whole milk, 160 lbs skim milk, rennet, and salt (salt is added at a later step). First they combine both milks and rennet, then until it forms a firm cream, then they put in a whisk device to break it up into very small curds, then apply steam heat to harden the cheese and separate it from the whey. This all done within the large copper pots. They let the heated mixture rest for 1 hour, after that men with paddles pry each ball from the bottom of the pot, cut it in half and hang in cheese cloth. Each pot contains ingredients for 2 wheels of finished cheese.
Alessandro our guide told us that for 1 day they place each round of cheese inside a cheese cloth within a plastic ring, then day 2 they take into a separate room where they take off the cheese cloth and surround the cheese with a rubber strip that imbeds information about date, location, lot number, DOP seal into the rind of the cheese (there is no wax, the entire wheel is cheese) and place into a mesh metal ring to allow moisture to escape and the rind to start to form. From there the cheese is moved into the brining room. They remove the metal ring and rubber strip. These rectangle vats of brine are large enough to place 4 x 4 rounds of cheese vertically and maybe 50 long, so lots of cheese. It remains in the brine for 8 days. Then the wheels are put in storage rooms to dry and the brine to penetrate the deepest part of the wheel. Minimum age is 12 months. A machine turns the cheese wheel every 6 days and scrubs the rind with a hard bristle brush. An inspector comes to test the cheese for holes, mold or imperfections. For a DPO inspection approval it must be perfect, others can be sold as soft cheese. We got to taste a 12 month and a 36 month... and purchased a 36 month wedge. Sorry Sarah, can't bring you a wheel of cheese, it only comes in 1 size and I could sit on it as a stool!
Balsamic Vinegar from Modena is a family legacy passed from generation to generation. When a baby is born a father purcases a minimum of 5 barrels of decreasing sizes to start a new batch called "La Batteria". Many woods can be used to make the barrels, but if over time they leak you must build a new casket around the old to preserve the flavor. The caskets are left open on top to allow to air's natural yeast content to enter and ferment a small portion of the top level, but also allow for natural evaporation...concentrating the flavors. Each winter you must transfer a portion of liquid from larger barrels to smaller to keep 90% within each barrel. There are 2 types (DPO, same rules as the cheese, IGP which only requires 1 element in the completed process to occur within the region...hence the reason most of us have never tasted the real thing). For DOP minimum age is 12 years, and is certified by blind tasting testing inspectors. The second photo is of this particular family's 160+ year original la batteria. At the end of this tour they gave us 2 types of parm cheese, balsamic vinegars, salami, pizza, cappucino's, fresh ricotta, and as a special dessert from Napoli, Sfogliatelli (phyllo dough filled with either dark chocolate or lemon cream) it resembles a lobster tail. (Chris said he could eat the lemon one every morning) :-)
Lets not forget everything was paired with a different wine, even with our breakfast "snack" (not pictured at the top of the page).
Next up was our proscuitto parma ham tour. They process many parts of the pig from front and hind quarters, to pork loin and guanicale (pork cheek). I wish I could remember all the details from this process, but here is what I can remember. Each pig is butchered at 9 months (considered perfect muscle to fat ratio). Each piece is trimmed or deboned depending on what finished product that is called for, then covered in a dry salt mixture. It is then hung to cure and moved from room to room depending how long each step is called for. It is then taken into large room with a hot shower, looks a lot like a car wash! Then to a hot air drying room for 8 days. From there it is taken to more rooms of varying curing times until finally it is brushed with a rice flour, lard and pepper mixture to protect the integrity of the interior of the pork. Minimum time for proscuitto is 14 months, but longer times are used for people who prefer deeper flavor and have deeper pockets...time=money!
I'd like to tell you that lunch was next...but so many tastings ran back to back, not sure where one ended and the next began. I know we tasted 4 types of proscuitto at one point. Then they served eggplant parmesan and a type of pasta with pork crumbles and cream, salad and tiramisu! Bottles of wine drained faster than our guide could happily uncork. From Fizzante (carbonated wines, to non-carbonated, whites, reds, sweets, dry...you name it we had it). I had a hard time convincing our guide I was sticking to non-fizzy water! The picture of the men included 2 other male guests besides Chris and 1 main guide (alessandro) 1 driver (alessandro) and our proscuitto guide (sorry, can't remember his name).
Our tour group included 2 other couples (both young). One from Estonia, and one from the Netherlands.
A very full and fun day.