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.