Tutto posto alla vostra casa

We are back at our cozy apartment in Radicofani where the weather is anything but "cozy" at the moment. The drive up from Rome went well--just clouds, but once we got to the house the wind-whipped rains descended and we got pretty well soaked on the many trips to bring our provisions and luggage up from the car.

Weary and in need of a break, we signed on to the wifi and read our newspapers for awhile. Joe took a shower and caught a second wind. He decided we needed to go find wine to serve with Easter dinner. I wasn't really up for an excursion after a 22 hour travel day, but I was hungry so I put on some makeup and  we set out for Montepulciano, which is the kind of place that always has several shops open--even on the night before Easter.

We took the back roads, passing by Dopolavoro, a very nice restaurant and cozy wine bar we've been to several times, and stopped there hoping for a snack to reenergize us. A platter of salumi and formaggi with foccaccia and two glasses of Supertuscan IGT did the trick and I was ready to play again.  

In Montepulciano, we found a cheese shop where the clerk let us taste any of the dozen or so cheeses that are made by the family. We bought  two--sotto il fieno, which is covered in hay, and a stagionato latte crudo, made with raw milk. It has a grainy texture similar to an aged Gouda or Parmesan.

At the macelleria, we watched the butcher and his wife exchanging happy banter with all their customers and agreed that it'd been awhile since we'd seen two people who loved their work so much. We bought finocchiona and porchetta, but were salivating over the giant bistecca fiorentina that the couple before us were treating themselves to. 

Our final stop was at the Bottega del Vino Nobile, one of our favorite wine shops. We got a tasting card and used the "Enomatic" machines to taste about a dozen wines before choosing two: Tibertini Vino Nobile for Easter dinner and a Grillesimo Morellino di Scansano for a "rosso della casa" for the week. 

Here, Joe is researching ratings on the bottles we are tasting. Cesare, the affable shop owner threw in a bottle of Prosecco as a gift for Easter. Great guy!

We both fell asleep around eight, but now it's 2:30 a.m. and I am wide awake, drinking mint tea and writing my first blog post of the trip. Ah, jetlag . . .

Arrivaderci Bologna

Joe's idea of heaven

It's not often that you get a chance to surround yourself with your favorite food. Joe is delighting in the salty, pungent scent of 20,000 whole prosciuttos at the Nini factory.

The final stop on our full day tour, the prosciuttoficio was a non-descript concrete block building in a residential neighborhood outside of Modena. On multi levels we were allowed to see all the different stages required to make a DOP prosciutto. The whole fresh thighs of the Grande Bianco pigs come to the factory weekly from the slaughterhouse. They are first caked with sea salt and allowed to rest for a few days. 

The salt is blown off by a machine, and another resting period follows. There is another salting phase, then the whole hams are allowed to dry for 70 days to reduce their moisture content by about 30%. After this period the factory workers massage a mixture of lard, salt and rice flour into the areas of the hams that are not naturally covered by fat--the top of the thigh and the area where the pig's knee would be.

 They are hung to dry in a climate-controlled setting for a total of 14 months and then inspected by the consorzio which determines quality for production of artisanally-made foods in Italy. If the hams pass inspection, they are fire-branded with the official mark of the region and sold to shops and restaurants.

We learned that the hams can be stored uncut for six months and once sliced into, must be eaten within a month.

Pranzo

Our third stop was at a charming inn and restaurant, where we were served a traditional lunch of foods from the Emilia-Romagna region.

We tried tortellini in cream sauce, tagliatelle al ragu (the classic Bolognese sauce), then tigelle and gnoccofritto--two breads from the area. Into the breads we could put an array of salumi or squacquerone cheese with pickled onions and arugula or a pate' of hams and lard. Wine was another Lambrusco and a sangiovese from E-R. Dessert was coffee or lemon gelato and espresso. We all toddled out of there asking if they had any vacant rooms to catch a nap.

Aceto Balsamico di Modena

Romano Boni is a young guy with a wife and tiny children who has followed in his family business creating artisanal balsamic vinegar. He even uses the same wood casks that his great, great-grandfather used to make the vinegar beginning in the 1870s.

Each year a "set" of barrels are started and filled with boiled juice from Trebbiano grapes. They age for a minimum of 12 years. After the 12 years, the tiniest barrel is half drained and the resulting liquid is the balsamic vinegar. Then, the second smallest barrel is used to refill the tiny one, the third largest barrel used to refill the second, etc. The largest barrel in the set gets filled with the new year's juice. Most sets have seven barrels, made of many different woods--oak, chestnut, apple, and other local types--each imparting their own flavor to the grape juice over the years. Each barrel has an opening that is covered only by a linen cloth so evaporation and concentration of the juices can occur. Some of the cloths are charmingly embroidered.

It's a very old fashioned process done by a very young artisan.

At the end of the tour we tried the 12 year and 25 year old vinegars on parmigiano cheese, on the fresh ricotta (bought at the last stop) and on vanilla gelato, which was excellent!

Parmigiana Reggiano

So much happened today, I will not be able to fit it in one blog, so I am going to separate our day into types of food. We took an all-day food tour with a company called Amazing Italy, which began with a pick up in front of our apartment at 8 a.m. Our driver Michaele and guide Isabella were friendly and kind.

First up was a small Parmigiana Reggiano producer in the country outside the city of Modena. In order to go into the factory we had to dress up in silly costumes.

The owner and master cheesemaker runs the plant with his wife and three other employees to produce approximately 20 50-kilo wheels of cheese per day, plus all the remaining whey is turned into ricotta.

Here is the owner scooping out fresh ricotta from the reboiled whey. Our tour guides bought some that we would try later (wait for the next blog).

Basic steps to making PR:

Add milk and rennet and salt into giant copper cauldron and heat to correct temperature, then wait for the curds to form and gather it up in giant balls--2 balls to a pot. Allow them to hang for awhile then muscle each ball into a plastic mold with a weight on top to extract more water. 

The next day, stamp the official logos and date of manufacture, then put each wheel in a stainless steel mold to form the official shape. After a couple of days in the mold, put the wheels into a brine (Sicilian salt) where they rest floating around for 20 days. 

Then the wheels get sent to an aging room containing some 7,000 cheeses where they will be brushed off and spun around every two weeks by a robot for anywhere from 15 to 36 months, depending on the level of aging the cheesemaker wants to produce.

At the end of the tour, we gathered outside the plant for a tasting of cheeses aged 15 and 28 months. The younger one was softer and fuller, and the older one was nutty and had a granular texture. Both were excellent with the Lambrusco we drank with our "breakfast."

Just a tad creepy

One of the earliest buildings of the University di Bologna is called the Archiginnasio and it's just off the Piazza Maggiore in the center of town. There are still classrooms and lecture halls that are used to teach the scholars of Bologna today, but it's the Antico Teatro Anatomico that I found fascinating.

Used in the 1400s to teach future doctors about anatomy, the theatre is set up with a central table in Carrara marble upon which human bodies were dissected to demonstrate that the kneebone was in fact connected to the shinbone. The bleacher-style seating in hard wood surrounds the central slab.

At one end is the seat, more like a throne, of the ranking lecturer of anatomy. The ornately carved ceiling tops it off.

Outside the Anatomical Theater the walls and ceilings of the hallways are covered with the coats of arms of graduating students, each was allowed to leave their permanent mark on the university. Some are massive (sons of rich folks) and others are more modest. Copernicus and Petrarch are among the former students of the U of B.