Don Genova's Blog

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!

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!   

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? 

This post might be about my US Thanksgiving meal in Italy, but it starts with a photo of the Canadian flag.  Although I am proud that my country is represented in the courtyard of the building housing the Gastronomic Sciences University, it’s a strange representation.  The flags of all the other countries there are correct, but somehow the Canadian flag has had the red stripes and flag rotated to fit the ‘long format’ it is hung in.  Hmmm….it’s supposed to look like this:

Okay, enough patriotism.  What this post is really about is a great dinner our class was invited to by our colleagues who are just finishing the same course, but in Italian.  However, they also have a large number of American attendees, so a celebration was in order, with two of largest turkeys I have ever seen:

The chef from the Alma Cooking School seemed quite excited about carving it, and he should have been.  It was delicious!  Everyone brought some sort of side dish, so we were able to taste good old-fashioned mashed potatoes, wild rice, a cranberry and orange chutney, green beans with almonds, and so on and so on!  I contributed a panzanella salad, made up of leftovers from our party the night before.  I soaked some cubes of stale bread in a bit of water, and mixed them in with cut-up cherry tomatoes, thinly-sliced fennel, and grilled zuchinni in a dressing of lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper.  Not bad for a last minute throw-together!   Today in class we get our first lesson in cheese technology…andiamo! (let’s go!)