...Italy (Never tell an Italian that their bread is rubbish)

Eating with new friends in Turin (shortly after ´bread-gate`)

There are millions of books waxing lyrical on Italian food and pages upon pages analysing 'why Italians love food'. Quite frankly, I've spent over two months in this country and I can't really say that Italians love food more than any other nation I've had the pleasure of eating in. And I include Briton in that. What I have observed and feel I can confidently say is Italians seem to take food and drink more seriously than most cultures. And I would like to use this post to illustrate this point. And tell you some other random stuff I discovered.

Firstly, the title of this blog refers to an occasion where Finn announced to a table of Italians that he thought that Italian bread wasn't very good. The jaws dropping around the table suggested he had made a big mistake. You do not criticise their food it would seem. When we later pointed out that someone at the table had agreed, we were told ´Yes but he can be a real sh*t sometimes`! Excuses and then recommendations were made for where to find 'good' bread. (We never found it).

In a small town near where we were staying in Emilia Romagna, we were advised that we could take any wild mushrooms we found to a man at the council offices who would identify them for us. If he wasn't available then the mayor could do it instead.

Wild mushrooms

When residents of Modena, a large town in the north famous for its Balsamic vinegar, heard the church bells warning of American bombers during World War Two, they fled with their cherished possessions including small kegs of the prized vinegar.

You can buy lasagne hot from vending machines (Finn thinks this says the opposite to my point about Italians being serious about food but to me, it suggests they think 'well if you want a cheap and quick fix then have a lasagne rather than a Mars bar).

Lasagne vending machines

To cook Florentine T-bone steak, you are advised by cook books to follow the rules of the 'Association of the Florentine T-bone Steak Academy'.

A sign in a Florentine butcher

You can buy dried pasta in vending machines.

Women in Umbria are advised to eat a chicken everyday for forty days after giving birth. In another region it's chickpeas.

Many bars do 'aperitivo' where you buy a drink and get access to a buffet. However, whereas in Britain we'd just get scotch eggs and sausage rolls (though I'm not complaining), here we tucked into plates of lasagne and pasta.

Good balsamic vinegar makes everything taste glorious. Including ice cream. And bland lasagne which is made even more tasteless by racist waiters.

This post is the last for Italy. It has been difficult to decide what I should write about as we really have eaten some very tasty things. Earl grey and chocolate ice cream, small calzones bursting with mozzarella and Parma ham, 50 year old balsamic vinegar, homemade cheese, a meal where every course was based on mushrooms, rich and thick hot chocolate. We've had memorable experiences too. Discovering the farm where we were working had a room where they made balsamic vinegar, dipping Tuscan biscuits into Cuban rum, learning how to make pasta, eating homemade pizza with a family on a Saturday night in their living room which they'd turned into a cinema for the night, having to describe to a table of new friends exactly how our meal tasted, cooking over an open fire, watching Finn's face slowly turn black from the squid-ink pasta he was eating. Italians (and ex-pats!), I am eternally grateful for what you have taught me about food and hope you will eventually forgive us for thinking (and telling you) your bread is a bit rubbish. But really, everything else is pretty frickin wonderful. Good job.

Making pasta

We've got three weeks until we catch our home-bound train from Paris. I guess we might as well go and see what they eat in Slovenia...

...Italy (The Sound of a Good Cheese)

There is a sharp intake of breath all around as the Italian gentleman in the white coat moves towards the shelf labeled 'Carlotta'. He lifts the 40kg golden cheese and taps it with his little silver hammer. "Tap tap", he knocks around the side, "Tap tap", he raps it on the top and the bottom. The cheese is placed back on the shelf and the sound of breath being released followed by a spontaneous round of applause from us spectators echoes around the vast hall. For the cheese has passed the test. It's a good 'un which is a relief as it belongs to the owner of the farm on which we are staying.

The Parmigiano Reggiano factory we are visiting is award winning and has been awarded gold status. This means that last year every cheese passed 'the hammer test' (when you consider they produce 12 cheeses a day, that's no mean feat). The white-coated official is listening for hollows in the cheese. Hollows suggest bad quality and less superior taste (but this is good for us because it means we can buy the rejects in Lidl at a reasonable price. Oh the shame!).

So how do you make an award-winning cheese? Firstly, the cows must be fed only hay otherwise the cheese won't bond. Milk taken in the evening sits in long troughs and is mixed with 'morning milk' the next day in a big copper vat where the 'cheese' drops to the bottom. After being 'blessed' (the sign of the cross is made in each vat) the rest of the milk is taken to be used for making ricotta (or to reduce swellings - you immerse the affected limb in a jug of the stuff!). The cheese is then wrapped in muslin and put into moulds. For the next 20 days the cheese sits in a salty bath (mmmmm salty bath). This causes a chemical reaction within the cheese that makes it easier to digest - you could give it to a baby and they could digest it, though you might want to grate it first (the cheese that is). After that the cheese sweats the last of the salt out in a Turkish bath (mmmmm salty, Turkish bath). It then sits in a large hall on a shelf to mature from anywhere between 12 and 52 months.

And here we are, back in the factory gazing at rows upon rows of glorious cheeses. We are taken to taste cheeses of different maturities which contort our faces to degrees a professional gurner* could only dream of. The cheeses are surprisingly sweet and are tasty on their own. The idea of biting into a lump of Lidl's parmesan is unthinkable (for a start it would probably break my teeth). But the Parmeggiano Reggiano is often served as a cheese in itself. With a drizzle of balsamic vinegar over the top. Bellissimo!

 

* if you are unfamiliar with this word it would be far more satisfying for you to google it rather than have me explain it. Trust me.