Bonnie & Joel's Excellent Adventures

We were up at the crack of dawn on Friday to take the first fast train from Florence to Bologna.  Exiting the maze of the huge Bologna train station to find our meet-up point we were joined by a newlywed couple, Eunice and Jeff from Columbus, Ohio, who had come up on the same train for the same tour.  Good thing they found us in the station as they didn’t have any documentation to guide them to the gelateria where we were picked up for the 45 minute ride to nirvana.  

By nirvana I of course mean the dairy farm/Parmesan cheese producer we visited outside of Modena.  

We donned the official cheese making watcher costume/uniform.  

This is when we met the our guide, no its unfair to call him that, he is really the evangelist of the foods of this region, more of a zealot and a hell of a lot of fun.  Take a look at him telling us about the king of cheeses.

We were provided a lesson in making the king, it starts early each day, milking the cows at 3am, moving the raw unpasteurized milk from the cows less that 200 meter away from the cheese making plant.  At around 6am they heat the milk, add the rennet, let it sit and form curds, cut the curd, heat it again let cool and coagulate, then capture the two one hundred kilo balls per huge copper kettle of fresh cheese in cheesecloth and put it into the plastics containers to shape it into wheels.  It gets engraved with the D.O.P designation switched to a metal sieved container to drain and dry.  The wheels are placed in the salting room where they sit for 5 days constantly being turned and absorbing the Sicilian Sea Salt from the water.

And then it is wheeled into this glorious place to age for at least 13 months and as long as 60 months.

Inspectors from the consortium that is the Parmesan DOP come and thump the wheels with special hammers listening for hollow points that indicate gas formed holes that can cause a wheel’s aging to be terminated and become, just cheese not the King of Cheese, Parmesan.  At the end of the initial aging period they are inspected, deemed worthy and are given the official stamp from the DOP.  This is a very good thing!  DOP is short for Denominazione di Origine Protetta (literally “Protected Designation of Origin”). As the the name suggests, this certification ensures that products are locally grown and packaged. And it makes a promise to the consumer: It’s a guarantee that the food was made by local farmers and artisans, using traditional methods. In fact, by law, only DOP products like balsamic vinegar can carry the word “traditional” on their labels, because they adhere to local tradition

Our “light” breakfast at the Parmesan holy ground included a 13 month, a 24 month and a 60 month aged Parmesan.  Along with local salami, mortadella sandwiches, strawberries, pastries, a ricotta chocolate chip cake all washed down with local home made Lambrusco sparkling wine.  Followed of course by an expresso.  This definition of lightness was another theme of the day.  For as the prophet Alessandro said, “diets are for another day, today is for eating”….seriously how can you not love this guy!

A 5 minute drive down the road to one of the oldest, most famous producers of Modena DOP Balsalmic Vinegar.  We were told that Anthony Bourdain had toured this very facility, for what that’s worth.  The process was explained and very intriguing.  Key take always, the stuff you buy at supermarkets is not rea DOP balsamic, real balsamic is way to good and expensive for salad dressing, balsamic makers are more in it for the tradition and art than for the money.  The real DOP stuff tastes like raisins with a little acid and is great on ricotta!  The Pedroni Aceti of Modena has been a family enterprise since 1862.  The current patriarch, was on hand to greet us.  He makes his living from the restaurant on site run by his wife, and oh also he is a lawyer.  The attics where they ferment and age the vinegar smelled fantastic.  They go through a five barrel aging process, changing the type of wood in most cased picking up different flavors for 12 to 24 years.  This is slow food.

A little further away we made visited our last producer on our food tour of nirvana.  A prosciutto maker in the Modena DOP.  Every Modena DOP starts with a pig that was born, raised a butchered in Italy. No pig that has not been raised humanely or from outside of Italy can officially be designated DOP Modena Prociutto.  It can be termed prosciutto, and may be tasty, but it is not an official Modena DOP Prociutto.  Similar to no sparkling wine can officially be called Champagne unless it is made in that region of France following their proscribed method.  The plant receives the hind legs of hundreds of pigs each day, salts them with sea salt, and ages them for a minimum of 14 months.  They are inspected, and if deemed worthy (it’s a smell test) they are stamped with the DOP code.  And then they are sliced up and sampled.  

Bonnie is not generally a big fan of Prociutto, was even going to pass on the tasting after the tour, I got her to try one of my (many) slices and she loved it. I believe she went back for seconds, maybe thirds.  After all this guy was slicing.

Then it was time to drive to our last stop.  An AgriTourismo property for a “light” lunch with some of the wine made on the premises.  Oh Lordy Lordy when the lunch starts with the words “the first pasta course…” you know two things right away….there is no lightness involved anywhere in this lunch…and you are definitely going to need the pants expander.  Three pasta courses, one with sausage and chives, one with rabbit seasoned with cloves and cinnamon (yes bunny lover Bonnie passed on the rabbit), those sad sad words “the final pasta course” for tagliatelle with bolognese sauce.  Platters of pasta that according to Alessandro, could not be returned to the kitchen with any pasta remaining.  So it fell upon mostly the gentlemen in the tour to take one for the team and keep having their plated refilled with pasta to not offend.  I am a team player.  After the pasta, came a nice salad and plate of roasted vegetables, finally the light in the “light” lunch, except of course the spinach soufflé.  Then the meat course, pork cheek braised in the house wine and spices.  Like short ribs on steroids, in a good way.  Dessert was of course tiramisu, brownies and a cherry pastry, very light.  Each course was accompanied with it’s own wine pairing and we finished with expresso with a little house made grappa.  About 4:30, mind you we got off the train at 7:25am, we were led back to our vans and transported back to the train station in Bologna in a blissful state or food coma.

To be honest, we had no clue that this tour was going to provide us with soooo much food to eat.  We even booked the latest fast train, thinking we would probably walk a little around Bologna, take in an early dinner and then ride the train back to Florence.  Ah, no.  Even with the expand-o pants there was no freaking way we could think about eating, or walking around.  We exchanged our ticket for the earlier train and headed out of nirvana back to Florence.  Holy crap, this is what we are talking about when we say Foodapalooza!