Don Genova's Blog

Parma Palate - Ah, Puglia!

Okay, so Ah, Puglia is a play on words, as Puglia used to be known, and you can still see it on many maps, as Apulia.  I thought it was an appropriate title to start this post as we enter into the last day of our field trip in this region.  Over the past couple of days we have seen the best Puglia has to offer in terms of landscapes, quaint villages dating back to medieval times, and of course food and wine.  The shot at the left (photos by Betsy Manning again in this post) was taken in a marine park where the delicate shoreline ecosystem is being protected.

Before heading to the marine park we spent some time in an ancient olive grove...which was also the home to some beautiful wildflowers, as ably demonstrated by classmate Jessica in this photo.  All the olive trees in this grove used to be owned by a single nobleman.  After the Second World War and Italian reformation, the land was redistributed to local farmers in plots deemed large enough to support their families based on subsistence farming.  In amongst the olive trees other crops such as peas and fava beans were planted.

The average age of these olive trees is 500 years.  That's FIVE HUNDRED YEARS!  The physiology of the tree trunks are a great example of Mother Nature's ability as a sculptor. The trees can survive almost any trauma.  Quite often they get a disease which eats away at the inside of the trunk, but the farmers do what they can to remove the dead wood and the trees continue to thrive, with an elaborate twisting of the trunk and major branches that go off in all directions.  Even if an old olive tree is burned to the ground, or chopped off, or damaged by cold weather, eventually new growth will sprout again and the life cycle continues. 

One of the highlights of the day was visiting a subterranean olive oil mill that was recently refurbished and turned into a museum by a major olive oil producer in the area.  We learned that many mills were built underground centuries ago for a number of reasons, one being security, another is that a cave can keep the temperature low during milling operations, or at least have temperatures more easily maintained.  When the owners of the mill were researching its history, they discovered a very important document.  This document detailed the expansion of the mill, and it was dated in the 1430's!

This is a line of what were once 8 separate presses. The owner of the mill is demonstrating how these presses were turned by hand to extract the oil and water from a paste that was made from crushed-up olives. The paste was made by pouring ripe olives into a basin with a couple of millstones that were turned by donkeys or horses. This was one more reason why the mills were carved out of the rock.  The roof could withstand the upward pressure of the presses as they were cranked to extract the oil.  The oil and water would then drain into holes carved into the stone in front of the presses.  The oil floats on top of the water, and could then be drained off.

I'll leave you with one more great shot from the "the White Town" ("La Città Bianca", in Italian), Ostuni. We stopped there for a short visit and went within the walls of the medieval city.  Check out the Wikipedia link for historical info.  Off to Brinidisi now for the afternoon fish market...more posting to come!

Parma Palate - Hitting the Road

Last weekend a few of my classmates and I rented a car to tear over hell's half acre. We started on Saturday with a drive into Liguria up and down mountain roads, to the seaside, and an interior 'island' for eel and trout...this is one of the restaurants I went to in Liguria, called La Brinca.  You think that means 'on the brink'? It was nicely perched on a cliff overlooking a terraced green valley.  And the food was pretty good, too!  Here's a photo album of the trip, complete with captions at the bottom of each photo.

After the restaurant there were more winding roads to negotiate until we got to the autostrada.  This was the first time I drove a car in 4 months, and I thoroughly enjoyed being behind the wheel, both in the mountains, on the highway and right in the city.  The city was Genova, where we made a whirlwind visit.  Let me tell you, it's kind of weird to see your last name plastered all over the place!

There was a very impressive duomo in Genova, but of course as foodies we were even more excited to find an artisanal food market just around the corner.  It was loaded with little stalls selling cheese, cured meats and sausages, olives, honey, olive oil and on and on.  I picked up a great selection of olives, including some pickled garlic that was the most mild I have ever tasted...don't know how they do it!  The other great find was a pork sausage laced with truffle.  Should have bought two of them!  Some of the cheeses looked pretty sketchy, actually.  There were so old they didn't even look edible, but obviously these cheeses had certain qualities appreciated by certain cheese lovers.  Because we became just a little hungry after our explorations we stopped at a very typical restaurant and enjoyed dishes of marinated mussels, calamari and fritto misto, a mixed 'fry-up' of battered shrimp, squid and small fish.  Wasn't that great but hit the spot.  We drove all the way back to Parma and Colorno.

On Sunday we went to a little town called Isola Dovarese, not far from Colorno, about halfway in between Cremona and Mantova.  The restaurant was called La Crepa. It's called Isola, or island, because of the river that surrounds it on three sides.  We were surprised to find  fish on the menu, so we had the fish antipasti, which consisted of  marinated eel, as well as warm trout with polenta.  I also enjoyed a rabbit ragu on top of thick but tender squares of pasta.

Then we went on to Mantova, one of the most significant religious towns in this region. Why? Because St. Andrew's Basilica was built to house relics, vials containing earth soaked with the blood of Christ that were reportedly brought to Mantova by the soldier who pierced the side of Christ on the cross.

On the food side we tried some tangy yet sweet mostarda made of clementine oranges so I bought some to serve with cheese and other goodies, I'll have a photo of that later, but here are more pictures of  La Crepa and Mantova in the photo album.

All You Can Eat - Venice, Milan, and Teaching Kids About Food and Nutrition

Hi everyone...this is a bit of a multiple purpose post.  It gives you information on my recent visits to Venice and Milan which I mention briefly at the beginning of my most recent podcast, All You Can Eat Volume 32.  And it has some details about the people I spoke with in my panel of Home Economics teachers at their conference I spoke at last fall.  On the right is one of the covered malls lining the Piazza San Marco in Venice.  The tiles are under about an inch of water, as was the part of the rest of the piazza, something that happens when the water rises up through the ground.  Reminds me of the old Spirit of the West song, 'And If Venice Is Sinking'.

We saw some of the platforms they have to put in the square so that people can walk into the duomo without having to wade through water when it gets really high!  I have many more photos to upload in an album for you.  Click here to view it. I'm also experimenting with putting some low-quality Real Video clips here.  This is one of a 'stroll-by' I did of some street musicians .

We hit the city of canals right at Carnivale time and both the streets and canals were jam-packed with people sporting amazing masks and costumes in the Venetian tradition.  Traditional foods and drinks we enjoyed included deep-fried bits of sweet bread called frittelle, which were moist, puffy and not soggy with oil…then there was a sweet which almost tasted like fruitcake but was pistachio green because of all the pistachios used, and topped with almonds.  I think a fist-sized square of it cost about 4 euros, but it was worth it!

As far as beverages go, at night you could buy hot and spicy mulled wine called vin brule, yes they used the French term, but by day we started our meals with a glass of bubbly prosecco, or before we sat down we would have an aperitivo of Campari, soda, a slice of lemon and a big fat olive.  That’s the way Venetians like their Campari!  And don’t try to order it much past 12 noon.  The bartender will say, ‘it’s finished’.  They just don’t make them in the afternoon!

Two restaurant suggestions for you, the first one is right near the Fondamente Nove Vaparetto stop, which are the boats that ply the waters in and around Venice like bus lines.  It’s called Algiubagio…and we actually enjoyed two great meals there, the first one featuring a delectable trio of seafood antipasti.  This pic shows a salad of arugula,tomatoes, carrots and tender, tender rings of squid. 

The other restaurant where we enjoyed a meal with some of my classmates who were also visiting Venice that weekend was called La Cantina, which is right on the Strada Nova near the Ca d'Oro vaparetto stop, although the actual address says it is at Campo san Felice, 3689.  Don't worry if you get lost in Venice at some point, everyone does.  The second night we were there we made our way from our hotel to the Rialto district and then Piazza San Marco in just a few minutes.  Think we could find our way back?  No way.  We found ourselves way out of the way late at night when there was hardly a person on the street.  We found a restaurant open...three of the staff pored over the little map that was on the brochure for the hotel and finally said, 'well, we don't know where this is but if you walk down this street and kind of head off to the left you should find it.'  Not a chance, but the instructions did lead to a square and I spotted a name on the square that matched a name on our map and YAY!, we finally found our home sweet home after what seemed like hours of wandering.

Anyway, at La Cantina we started with raw oysters, and a savoury lentil soup, then eventually the wait staff brought out huge platters of roasted pork with crispy crackling and mustard, green beans, and even dill pickles!  I was in heaven, my favourite food groups!  The place was quite busy and we found ourselves waiting quite a while to get our food and wine once we ordered, but we found the food to be quite tasty and I think it was around just 25 Euros each.

A week later Ramona and I found ourselves in the Piazza del Duomo in Milan, and wondering what the heck was going on!  It was some sort of children's festival and the piazza and pedestrian streets around the duomo were filled with thousands of people.  Every kid from 2 to teen was dressed up in some sort of costume, but what we noticed the most were all the mess-making accoutrement's available. Big bags of confetti, cans and cans of silly string and some sort of shaving cream-like foam were for sale in the square, and the stuff was all over the place.  Coming from Canada we were naturally shocked at what we would consider to be 'littering'.  I'm just glad I wasn't on the clean-up crew responsible for trying to get rid of all that confetti.  On the other hand, this is Italy.  They might just wait for the rain to wash it into the sewers. Here's a real video clip of people standing over a subway vent, at least that's what I think it was, as the confetti and streamers fly about.

Our Milan highlights included an expensive but mostly very satisfying lunch at a restaurant called Peck.  Ramona had been looking forward to her saffron-laced risotto Milanese and she wasn't disappointed. Our problem was that we went for a full-fledged lunch but we totally full after the antipasto of Culatello di Zibello and primi of her risotto and my pasta with mushrooms and walnut sauce.  After Peck the restaurant we went to Peck the deli and Peck the wine shop and the foods in the deli are so beautiful they made me want to cry.  Of course the prices made me want to cry as well.  I guess they get too many gawky tourists so they have a sign on the door saying 'no photos'. :(

That's okay, I don't think a photo would do it justice.  Rows and rows of beautiful chocolates, cheeses galore, spotlessly clean and well-stocked shelves full of olive oils and vinegars and....

Here at least is a shot from across the street, in case you're wandering the streets of downtown Milan and you need a 'lighthouse' to guide you. The sign says that the shop was founded in 1883.  Now that's longevity.

 

The other beautiful things strewn around Peck the deli were these amazing Berkel meat slicers.  We'd seen them in use in Venice and a classmate's boyfriend is gaga over them.  They really are stunning pieces of fine machinery.  They had one from the 30's that had a real art deco feel to it, and one from the 50's that had that sleek sort of rocketship styling common to that era.  Here's a picture of one I found on a website that sells these things refurbished.  I think they go for about $7500 U-S....meat not included. More pictures of Milan in this photo album.

Okay, now you're at the point where the rest of the podcast material comes in.  First, thanks to my sponsors for this week, Folgers Gourmet Selections and GoDaddy.com.

For free samples of Folgers Gourmet Selections coffee, visit www.folgers.com/podshow.  While quantities last, act soon!

And to take advantage of GoDaddy.com offers such as 10 percent off any order, use this code when you check out:  eat1

Thanks also to the teachers from THESA who took part in my panel discussion on what kids need to know about food and nutrition when they finish high school: Judy Chan, Joy Galea and Denise Lemard from BC, and Jane Edwards from Australia, for taking part in the discussion.  (sorry if I got the spellings wrong!)

You also heard a piece from my Food For Thought archives that featured Mara Jernigan, formerly of Engeler Farm, now of Fairburn Farm, a bed and breakfast and cooking school in BC's Cowichan Valley.  Mara is still heavily involved in the Slow Food movement and is always looking for volunteers to help out with projects on southern Vancouver Island.

Food For Thought/Parma Palate - Parmigiano Reggiano Cheese

This week on Food For Thought, a visit to a Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese plant, a process steeped in tradition. Listen to the audio file.   Our Masters of Food Culture class at the University of Gastronomic Sciences spent two days examining the production of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese.  (which I will abbreviate as P-R from now on!)  This cheese has nothing to do with the grated Parmesan cheese product you may have had in those green shaker cans when you were growing up.  The tradition of making this cheese goes back to the 14th century!  You can read all about it at the P-R Consortium website.

When we are visiting these food production sites we always have to gear up in gowns, booties, hats, and in my case, a beard guard.  The first time we had to do this much hilarity ensued, and we all took pictures of each other.  Now, the novelty has worn off, so this is the last shot you'll see.  For me it's a bit of a pain since I have to work all my audio gear around the various headgear, and then all the rustling tends to show up on my recordings, but once you're in a processing plant, all you hear is the noise of rushing water and machinery.

On this photo album you will find, more or less, the process of how P-R cheese is made.  Because P-R is a  Protected Designation of Origin (P.D.O.) product within Europe, there are very, very strict rules as to how it is made, where the milk comes from, what the cows are fed, and so on.  (you can read all about it on the P-R website)  Your humble scribe also has to write a technical paper on our trip as part of my course requirements.

What I didn't have time to get into in my audio presentation was the competitive battle the P-R producers are waging now with other similar-style cheeses such as the Grana Padano, pictured at left.  Grana is made in a similar fashion, but has looser rules than the P-R PDO.  It is also not required to be aged as long as P-R.  Supermarket chains (practically unheard of in Italy 20-30 years ago) have pursued aggressive pricing policies, and the wholesale price of P-R has dropped below what it costs the producers in the consortium to make it!  But they have been operating at a loss for the past couple of years, with no relief in sight.  What else can they do?  Many of these producers are family-owned operations and have been doing the same thing for dozens of years.

This is one of my favourite photos from our trip to the cheese plant.  This is a master cheesemaker, ladling ricotta into its traditional baskets.  Ricotta is made with the whey left over from the P-R making process.  They only do this on Thursdays.  The rest of the whey is fed to pigs, or fermented to use in the cheese making process the next day.

Parma Palate - Christmas in Rome - Photos and Podcast

What can I say?  Rome is one of the most remarkable cities in the world I've ever been to.  There's always something fascinating to look at around the next corner, and something else to eat!  I could go on and on and on, but I have already posted an idea of what I ate in Rome at Christmas in this entry.

Another hit at our dinner table was the veal saltimbocca I made, with a Marsala twist.  Pound some veal scallopini thin.  Lay on a slice of prosciutto and a few fresh sage leaves.  Fold over and pound together again.  Dredge in seasoned flour.  Fry for a couple of minutes on each side in a hot frypan with butter and olive oil. Remove the veal from the pan, pour in some Marsala wine, (careful, if you're cooking with gas you will flambe for sure!) and boil until the sauce has thickened, scraping up anything on the bottom of the pan.  Pour the sauce on your veal...enjoy!

Just a couple of more food highlights.  Ramona and I went to a wine bar named Roscioli twice, so you know it has to be good.  The first time we decided to splurge a bit. I think it was Ramona thought the waiter was cute, but it also could have been the fact that I was missing out on a truffle hunt with my classmates up north...anyway we ordered our pastas to be covered with thin slices of white truffle and did not regret for a moment the 30 Euro surcharge added to each plate.  Sometimes you just have to do it.

At the other end of the scale Ramona and her friend Ann hauled me down to a restaurant they had eaten at before I arrived in Rome called Sora Margherita.  Actually, it's not a restaurant, it's a 'Cultural Association'. Something to do with being closed down by health inspectors as a restaurant and reopening under the auspices of an association for which you have to sign a membership card before you can eat there.  Here is a shot of the front door, which you don't get through unless you have a reservation or there is actually a seat there.  Just finding the place could be hard, as there is no sign above the door!  The food was excellent though, polenta on a wooden board with tomato sauce like my mother made and a savoury sausage, agnolotti with meat sauce, a carciofi alla guidia, and for dessert?  A mound of ricotta cheese slathered with Nutella and doused with Grand Marnier.  Three of my favourite things in the world!

To see a photo album of my Top Twenty Photos from Rome, (okay, there are actually 24 posted) click here.  Sigh.  Back to school next week.  But we get to go and see how Parma Ham and Culatello di Zibello are made this month, and start courses in olive oil, wine and semiotics.

Oh yeah, almost forgot the podcast!  Go to allyoucaneat.podshow.com and listen to Christmas in Rome and 'things you should be cooking(and drinking) in 2007.'

Ciao for now...

Food For Thought - Christmas In Rome

Hello from Roma!  I met up with my wife Ramona here a week ago and we have been renting a great apartment in the Trastevere neighbourhood with Ramona's friend Ann Dusing, who makes an appearance in this week's Food For Thought.  In my column, I called Ann a retired history professor, when in fact she is a retired classics prof, so my apologies.  I had the best intentions of uploading photos and recipes from our Christmas meal, but the vagaries of the Internets have left me with little time and no patience...so once I get back to Colorno at the end of the week I promise to get on the ball and add more photos and recipes.   Special thanks to Gabriella Marino and her family for inviting us for dinner on Christmas Eve. If you would like to listen to Gabriella, Ann and the sounds of Rome contained in this week's Food For Thought, click here

The highlight of the dinner I cooked for Christmas Day was a 'thigh' of lamb. So here is a photo of that, with more to follow once I get to a more 'communicative' place to work.  This cut, from the top part of a leg of lamb, was pre-cut into thick slices, but the cuts didn't go all the way through the piece of meat, so it held together well while roasting, but had the advantage of cooking more quickly, with more of my seasonings penetrating the meat.  I chopped together some rosemary, garlic, and lemon rind, added salt and pepper and rubbed it into the spaces between the slices and all over the top.  I rested the thigh on a bed of sliced onions and sliced fennel, and a couple of bay leaves, then surrounded it with par-boiled potatoes I drizzled with olive oil, salt and pepper.  I roasted it in a convection oven at 200 degrees Celsius for about an hour.  How much rosemary, salt, pepper, garlic, etc.?  -Q.B.-  q.b. stands for Quanto Basta, a typical Italian recipe abbreviation that stands for 'just enough' or 'until just enough' .

Here is a shot of the fennel and orange salad my wife Ramona made.  It's from a recipe I learned in Sicily, usually made with blood oranges but this time of year it's great to make with sweet navels.

Fennel and Blood Orange Salad
Blood oranges have a very sweet, dark flavour and are almost purply inside. Use regular, seedless navel oranges if you can't find them.

Ingredients:
2 large bulbs fennel
2 blood oranges
2 stalks of celery, leaves included
1/2 cup small black Italian or French olives
extra-virgin olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Cut the stalks and any bad spots off the fennel bulb and reserve a few of the fronds.  Slice the fennel crosswise into the thinnest slices you can make.  (I use a Japanese mandolin for this)  Layer the fennel onto a wide plate or shallow casserole.  Slice the skin off the blood oranges and then cut crosswise into narrow slices.  Place the blood orange slices over top of the fennel.  Chop the celery stocks and leaves together and sprinkle over the orange.  Add salt and pepper to taste, and drizzle all over with olive oil.  Top with the olives and garnish with a few of the fennel fronds.  Serve cold or at room temperature.  Serves 4.

 

Parma Palate - Pasta Patrol

Making pasta from scratch is not such a hard thing...or is it?  At home in Canada I usually make the dough in a food processor, which means dough ready to rest in about 5 minutes.  Half an hour later, it passes easily through the rollers of my machine to make thin sheets for lasagna. (see my wife Ramona's Lasagna Project)

It's a little different here in Italy without a food processor in the kitchen, so although roommate Andy purchased a rolling machine, I had to make the dough by hand, in the time-honoured tradition of pouring a hill of flour (00 grade) on the table, making a well in it, cracking a couple of eggs into the well along with a little olive oil and salt.  Slowly incorporating the eggs into the flour requires a little finesse, then a lot of needing, and an hour to rest.  But as you see here, the dough did its thing.  And both Andy and my classmate Amy took turns at rolling out the dough.

Amy did very well for a beginner.  I actually thought the sheet that she rolled out was the thinnest and most uniform. After letting the sheets dry for a while, we cut them into fettucini strips and presented them to our classmate Marta for her birthday. She had actually run out of paella at the party, so the noodles were pressed into action along with a delicious tomato sauce some of the chefs from the Alma cooking school whipped up.  Always great to have chefs at a party!

Flushed with  success, I decided the following Sunday would be a great day to attempt making something like the tortelli di zucca, a very traditional Emilia-Romagna dish of largish pouches of pasta stuffed with roasted and sweetened puree of pumpkin.  The accompaniments?  Fresh fennel and orange salad with black olives, another salad with sliced mozzarella di bufala (water buffalo mozzarella), arugula and prosciutto, and stuffed and fried fiori di zucca. (zucchini flowers)

If that sounds ambitious, it wasn't really, just some slicing and stuffing and frying and pasta  making.  Except that's where things started to break down.  Although I used the same amount of ingredients, and even added some water, to last week's pasta recipe amounts, the damn dough would not co-operate and no matter how much we all tried to roll it out, it remained stubbornly fractured and stringy.  Finally we managed to get one sheet rolled out and stuffed....and they were good to eat!  (served with a little sage butter sauce)  The other problem children were the zucchini flowers.  I learned that if you buy the flowers on Thursday, you should use them on Thursday! By Sunday the ends of the flowers had rotted, but Amy managed to trim them and clean them up, and there were still usable pouches into which I stuffed a mixture of fresh, chopped shrimp and ricotta cheese.  The batter was made with flour and beer, and they were quite tasty, so a good save there...

Here are also the pics of the mozzarella salad and the fennel and  orange salad, not bad if I do say so myself, with help from Betsy, Amy and Andy.  A lot of other stuff happened last week, including our welcome dinner with the staff at our University, Turkish food night courtesy Betsy and a day trip to the beautiful city of Bologna....but you'll have to check back again for those stories...

Parma Palate - Mainly Because of the Meat

Have I ever mentioned that I love salami?  Prosciutto? Capicollo? Pancetta? And so on and so on?  This part of Italy is Salumi Heaven.  (salumi is the Italian term used for all cured meats)  Last week in school we learned all about cured meat technology...six hours of lectures discussing the differences between cured whole-cut products like prosciutto, coppa, bresaola and culatello, and fermented salamis that are made of chopped up bits of pork and/or beef like cotechino, salsiccia and soppressatas.

I won't bore you with all the technical details such as the factors determining the quality of long-ripening salalmis(LRS) versus rapid acidification salamis(RAS), but you should know that in the Parma region, prosciutto labeled Parma Ham is king, and culatello di Zibello, which is made from the heart of the hind leg of the pig, is even more revered. (and of course more expensive)  It was fun to be out shopping and eating on the weekend and seeing the stuff we had learned about on display in the shops and being served as antipasti in the restaurants.  My roommate Andy and I ventured into the EuroTorri complex in Parma Saturday afternoon to purchase some electronic supplies from a huge box store called MediaWorld and a Canadian Tire/Home Depot-like place called Brico...where a number of other shops reside, including...a prosciutto bar!  Of course, what other kind of snack bar would you find in Parma?

Parma Ham is a DOP product, or 'Product of Designated Origin' and there are dozens of pages of regulations that have to be adhered to before that raw leg of pig can have the official DOP stamp branded into it.  It was one of the first products to earn this status in the European Union.  I think our class will be visiting Parma ham and Culatello di Zibello producers over the course of the next year.

After a hard week of studying Italian, cheese technology and cured meat technology, it was time for an evening out in Parma.  A very popular wine bar is called Tabarro, just one of many bars along via Farini, just off of Piazza Garibaldi.  I've been there twice now, and have never made my way further into the place past the bar, where the custom is to order your glass or bottle of wine, then pop out into the street to consume it and chat with your friends and watch the hundreds of other people who are doing the same thing all up and down the street.

This would never happen in Vancouver.  Open liquor in glass containers on the street!  Shocking!  Police would appear in riot gear and arrest people, or at the very least confiscate the liquor, give you a ticket and shut down the any bar that had the affrontery to let people drink in the street. And yet in Parma (and some of the other European cities I've visited) this is no big deal.  People seem to be well-behaved and there wasn't a sign of police presence.  Ahhh, Europe! 

On Saturday I returned to Parma for my first leisurely daytime stroll and although the sky was grey (as apparently it is most of the winter), it was easy to see how beautiful a city it is and how pleasant it is to stroll through the cobblestoned streets.  There was a large public market where vendors where selling everything from shoes to artichokes, and in Piazza Garibaldi finishing touches were being placed on a huge Christmas tree.  No photo yet, I will wait until another night when it is all lit up.  In Colorno there is a tree as well, and tonight is supposed to be the lighting-up ceremony, so I'l looking forward to that.

Almost forgot to mention an excellent lunch I enjoyed on Saturday, courtesy a tip from my cyberfriend Gabriella, thank you!  Lunch was at Salumeria Sorelle Picchi on via Farini, where a beautiful deli conceals a room at the back with a dozen or so tables.  Classmate Corrie has already discovered this place and is a real favorite of the nonna who runs the dining room, so she was able to get us a table at the peak of lunchtime Saturday.  I had some very satisfying tortelli in brodo, a rich broth, and my dining companions tried the triste di tortelli, a combo or tortelli di zucca, (pumpkin), herbes (ricotta and swiss chard), and potato.  The entire meal rated high on the 'yum' scale.

This is just a beautiful part of the city you should see.  I'll actually find out more about the structures and let you know what it is in another post.  In my wanderings yesterday I purchased a cookbook...Parma, Its Cuisine in 80 recipes.  Today I will be attempting to recreate some Parmagiani recipes with my own twist.  So, zucchini flowers stuffed with shrimp and ricotta, battered and fried, and tortelli di zucca. Stay tuned for the results!

Parma Palate - Innards R' Us

At this point in my food eating career I am far beyond the idea of getting grossed out at the thought of eating various body parts of animals that aren't in the traditional North American lexicon. If I like the taste or the texture, that's more important than whether the protein came from a more unusual segment of a domesticated animal.

True, it can't be said that I am a big fan of chicken feet, or goose feet, but I have become fond of duck's tongues for dim sum and I adore a little spicy Korean chicken hearts dish I learned from James Barber.  These preparations and my subsequent samplings, whether I like them or not, have been courtesy of the Asian influence in Vancouver.   

Now that I am here in Italy, I'm getting a chance to try some things used in traditional dishes at almost every lunch prepared by the student chefs at the cooking school housed in the same building as our university.  Yesterday it was beef tripe, pictured above, tender and mild, floating in a savoury sauce augmented by some large white beans.  Today there was a somewhat strange brick-like serving of pork, what I think was pork liver, shrimp, and huge chunks of black truffle!  Most of the flavour actually came from the pork liver, the truffle was strangely devoid of its characteristic musty aroma.  And in another serving tray I found a large pork hock anchoring a stew which included what a few people thought was a coxcomb.  I ate a chunk of it...a little too reminiscent of chicken feet, so I won't go out of my way to eat it again.

On Sunday many of the folks from our class enjoyed a huge dish of paella prepared by our second birthday girl of the term, Marta from Madrid.  She got some help from some of the chefs at Alma, (the cooking school) and there was one word for the results:  delicious!  Lots of clams and shrimp in with the spicy rice, which only helped to fuel our attempts at learning a traditional Spanish dance.   

Even your humble scribe moved two left feet at one point, although I was more content to snap photos with other people's cameras as well as my own.  Happy Birthday, Marta, and thanks for the great party!

Yesterday was my first glimpse at Parma by day, but my limited wanderings were enough to reveal an incredibly beautiful city in the downtown core, can't wait to do more exploring.  The morning began at a very modern cafe (Lino's Coffee) where I had my first Italian bicherin, an espresso drink layered with cream and chocolate.  Yum!  These drinks were all the rage in Torino during this year's Winter Olympics, so it was great to get to taste something I had heard about on several occasions.

Quite a few of my classmates and I were in Parma to pick up our temporary residence permits, a necessary cog in the machine of Italian bureaucracy.  Luckily we have Michela on our side, the student services whiz in the Registrar's office at the University.  She basically did all the work, we just had to show our passports and pick up our 'stripe', which will eventually be replaced by the official permit.  Don't leave home without it!  While we were waiting for our bus back to Colorno I was struck by a large sculpture in front of a still brilliant yellow-leafed tree.  Enjoy the pic, and thanks to my buddy Steve for teaching me so much about framing and zooming with my feet!   

Parma Palate - Pub Crawl

There has to be something said for the architecture of Europe.  I'm probably not the person to say it since my knowledge is so limited, but I'm certainly learning to enjoy it.  How could you NOT enjoy this view, especially when I can just wander out to this setting during a break in classes?

I needed a bit of fresh air before heading into our first class on Cheese Technology.  Our instructor figures we need to know about peptides, enzymes, proteins and other essential scientific elements before we can even begin to comprehend how cheese is made.  I agree, and although chemistry is not my strong point, by the end of the class I began to see how all of the concepts he was explaining have some sort of relevance to cheese making. 

I also thought:  Hundreds of years ago before the science, people made cheese without all of this knowledge.  They just did it the way they figured it worked best.  Of course, there was probably a lot of bad cheese made before the good stuff came along.  The science helps get you the results you want in a consistent fashion...although some of cheesemakers I know will howl, 'but sometimes the science doesn't work!'

So Cheese 101 wrapped up our first week, and it was off to Parma for a night of exploration.  Well, mostly a night of drinking.  My classmate Betsy and I were going to cab it in to meet some others at 10pm in the Piazza Garibaldi, the main square of the city.  Sustenance came beforehand via a vegetarian pasta made with onion, zucchini, and tomatoes.  Betsy helped with the chopping, Yumi put together some mozzarella and breasola (air-cured beef) and Andy took the photo and cleaned up.  (he's great at cleaning up, thanks, roomie!)

Getting a taxi from Colorno to Parma on Friday night is not easy, we discovered, and had to walk all the way into town and beg some cafe staff to call one for us.  Which arrived about 25 minutes later, at which point the driver stopped for an espresso and a bathroom break before we actually got under way.  Viva Italia!  At least the time gave us an opportunity to start drinking, which we didn't stop doing until some hours later.  (not that I got drunk or anything)

Piazza Garibaldi was wonderful, our classmates were easily found, and we saw that a huge Christmas tree had been erected but not yet decorated.  It was a little damp as we started out, but it didn't dampen our spirits...because of course we just consumed more spirits.  I'm trying to make a point of always checking out the people who work at the bars to admire their amazing efficiency, and the interiors of these places which are loaded with so much history. 

I guess we hit three different places this evening, don't ask me the names of any of them.  At the second place we all sat around a huge table and ordered bottles of prosecco and red wine, for which we had to contribute the princely sum of 4 Euros each.  I was quite happy with the evening, which ended with another taxi ride back to Colorno around 3am, as I had been feeling a little bagged before starting out, but held out well for an old guy.  Did I mention I'm one of the oldest students in the class?