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!