One Perfect Plum

dig and be dug.

Finally, some whey. Or my week of pork fat and parmesan. Part Tre.

After all that pork fat, it was time for some milk fat. We went to a small parmesan producer the next day.

And when I say small, I mean they produce, at max, 14 wheels of parm per day. This producer uses milk only from special Vacche Rosse cows, an endangered breed with extra creamy milk that was used to make the first Parmigiano by Benedictine monks in the 13th century.

We learned about the complicated process, which requires great, much revered skill, something that you must train for as an apprentice for many years.

True Parmigiano Reggiano comes only from a small, specific area within Emilia Romagna called Reggio. The cheese is made from two different milkings: the morning milking is whole fat, and the evening milk is partially skimmed. As I said, there are many steps to the process involving heating the raw milk, adding fermented whey from a previous batch, breaking up the curd into tiny pieces, then the settling of the curd, draining of the whey, and molding into wheels, brining, and then usually two years of aging.

For lunch we went to a producer of traditional balsamic vinegar and lambrusco, the Medici Winery, where we learned about the solera processed used make their super concentrated aged balsamic vinegar. The oldest was a syrupy sticky magical elixir that they distributed to us with a dropper. 

We also went to a modern microbrewery, something fairly uncommon in Italy (mostly the Italianos are all about the wine). The brewery was called Dada and was run by these two cool young dudes.

Here’s a picture of our professor, the excellent taster Mirco Marconi; the leader of our study trip and sometimes translator, the purple scarf-wearing Charles; and one of the beer makers, who looked strangely like Justin Vernon of Bon Iver: 

(I mean he looks A LOT like him, right?)

At night we drank a bleary-eyed beer at a German place across from our hotel, after Veal Milanese for dinner and a typical harrowing bus ride from our slightly crazy bus driver.

The final day was a bizarre one, indeed. We were exhausted from the traveling, sleeping three in a room in hotels, eating incredibly rich food, drinking wine for almost every meal besides breakfast, loading and unloading from the bus, constant note-taking, usually via a translator, and all of the other wonderful facets of our first study trip. But before the ride back to Bra, we stopped at a strange little nature park run by the World Wildlife Federation right outside of Milan. The thing is, there really isn’t any wildlife right outside of Milan. Or basically anywhere in Italy for that matter. Most of Western Europe killed off their wild animals and cut down their forests centuries ago. So literally, the most exciting part of our walking tour through the scrappy woods was when our guild said, “Look! A squirrel!” 
 
However, there was this pretty little peaceful place in the woods. 
So, now that I’m finished with this post about Emilia, I can get started on one about my Christmas break. But first, some Slow Food-related questions that came to mind when thinking about this trip:      
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-The meat issue. On the whole eating meat is not sustainable. I’m sure some of the salumi and charcuterie we ate did not come from sustainably raised animals. And even sustainably raised, happy animals have carbon footprints. Becoming a vegetarian or vegan is one of the best things you can do for the environment. How to balance a love and respect of these traditions surrounding pigs and cows and still be mindful of the planet?    
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-Why are there no women butchers? It seems that, traditionally and today, the men butcher the meat and the women make the pasta. And in the USA, the men cook burgers on the grill, the women make the salad. In general, there are less women chefs and professional cooks than men, even in cities like San Francisco. Gender and cooking, something to think about…    
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-Why is there no substantial wildlife in Italy? As much as I love winemaking and farming, it seems that here in Northern Italy every inch of land is cultivated in one way or another. In a rare moment, this makes me proud of America (usually the villain in the tale of sustainability vs. capitalism and globalization), where I saw bears and coyotes and hawks and got to run around in huge, old forests all the time last summer in Lake Tahoe. We still have untouched nature in the ol’ red white and blue.   
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So there we have it. Ciao for now. 
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