Parmigiano-Reggiano

‘Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese’, observed Chesterton, but Italy's most famous cheese, grated on millions of plate of pasta daily, is an exception. It appeared in Boccacio’s Decameron; although the description is about the Basques, it sounds very much like Emilia-Romagna:

…in a region called Cornucopia, where the vines are tied up with sausages. And in those parts there was a mountain made entirely of grated Parmesan cheese on whose slope there were people who spent their whole time making macaroni and ravioli.

When the London Fire broke out, rescuing his precious wheel of Parmesan was one of Samuel Pepys' first thoughts. One of casualties of the big Emilia-Romagna earthquakes in May 2012 were the stores of Parmesan: some 300,000 wheels were destroyed, a loss estimated at €200 million.

Making Parmesan

Parmigiano-Reggiano is produced in a delimited area around Parma, Modena and Reggio Emilia. Each great wheel is made of 100 litres of rich milk solids, given by cows grazed on the lushest meadows in Italy, and heated to 40˚C while being stirred.