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Parma

Parma weekend


Monomento alla Vittoria (Victory) in Parma – unveiled in 1931 and made out of enemy weapons.

A long weekend in Parma: we had a holiday on Friday (Immaculate Conception) which I squandered on a day of rest and rehabilitation, trying to beat the bug that has been making life tiring and difficult. I hope that’s done the trick.

We had sunny days Saturday and Sunday and I spent the daylight hours of the former running errands at Brico and Ipercoop. A typical expat’s shopping expedition. Nancy has already written a poem of the wrong lightbulb, but at least she got to experience that in English. Yesterday I bought a lampada but managed to come home with the wrong lampadina – and no illustrated guidance on which is the right one. All those I’ve seen in corner shops have been standard screw-in types and this is obviously something else. Two other minor purchases went similarly awry – wrong battery, wrong size hook – and so it goes. Swimming through the murk.

Had a chance to commiserate with a few classmates over dinner. We compared notes: where can you buy a hammer? Who sells lightbulbs? Why do the service staff of Telecom Italia simply hang up when they hear an American voice? What’s the best way to get hold of the one cab that goes from Colorno to Parma at night? What’s the best way to learn Italian? What do they sell in the Chinese market? It was a convivial and delicious evening with almost as many things to eat as questions to ask.


Monumento a Corridoni – first world war memorial in Oltretorrente, near the Ponte di Mezzo.

Today I set off in hopeful fashion to replenish our water supply – bottles of drinking water we prefer over the heavily mineralised tap water that to our sensitive noses says ‘eau de sulfur’. All right to bathe in (apparently this is sulfur spa country so we’re not imagining it) but we prefer something less overt in our coffee. But I managed to miss the supermarket by about 10 minutes; it was closing early today due to the holiday I guess. There was instead a Christmas market to browse, and I came back laden with ancient apples (the variety rather than the produce, I mean), a couple more flavours of honey (melata – honeydew, and millefiori – a thousand flowers!) and some bread and cheese (pecorino – sheep’s milk cheese – I forget where this one was from, Sardinia maybe?). Now, on to catching up on some Italian lessons from last week…


Still life with pane, pecorino, “mele di nonna“, e miele.

The cheese, the salt and the rennet

Can I just say for starters what a rare pleasure it is to be surrounded by 24 people who do not find it the slightest bit odd to take photographs of one’s meals?

Yesterday’s supper was a better class of leftovers: risotto al limone (con zucchini) (handcrafted by me), plus booty from the supermercato: marinated anchovies, marinated fresh artichoke, thin slices of Salamini Italiani alla Cacciatora and Grana Padano, and a sprinkling of tiny Sicilian olives. Followed by a thin wedge of panforte. Just because I can.


Tonight for supper I had some fresh pasta from the grocery store: ravioli con cervo – surely my first encounter with venison ravioli. I could taste a mild game quality to it, but it was subtle and a bit unremarkable. Either my tastebuds are blown from this neverending cold, or the taste was too delicate to make much impact on this overwhelmed palate.

Anyway, we also sampled some fresh mozzarella tonight – utterly sublime, and a more meaningful mouthful as we’d learned about the making of it in cheese technology class today. I had been reading, before I left Canada, about artisan cheese makers who still produce it by hand, but our instructor was dubious on that point: and given the kneading and stretching must be done on a cheese mass whose internal temperature is 60 degrees c, in a water held at about 80 degrees c, I imagine a few artisans of yore may have been a little relieved to turn the task over to machines. Still I’d like to know what the work did to or for their skin tone…

I remember having some dinner conversations before I left Victoria about why cheese was salted, and I’m happy to report back on that with some preliminary information. We learned a bit today about salination: how cheeses are salted in brine or with dry salting, depending on the type of cheese. The salting is done after the milk has coagulated, formed into curds, been put into moulds to shape them, and then pressed; and the salt reaches the inside of the cheese through osmosis. It serves not only to flavour the cheese but to act as a retardant to the growth of bacteria, yeast and mold, and to move – again through osmosis – more of the liquids out of the cheese, in the interests of its texture and water content. We’d heard about similar effects of salt on cured meat in our classes last week as well. But it’s an imperfect preservative system as there are more bacteria to be wary of than those who perish in salt, which is why, we were told, the rind of gorgonzola is not meant to be eaten.

We had as well some instruction on the matter of heat-treating milk, including pasteurisation and UHT. Suffice to say that what you gain in food safety by killing bacteria, you may lose in flavour and the ability of your milk to coagulate predictably.

Oh, and some interesting stuff about rennet, which I’ve known about and loved for its use in making Junket since my somewhat old fashioned and clearly politically incorrect childhood (any other Junket eaters out there?). But even so, I am aware there is a political issue about the use of rennet in vegetarian cheeses, and it is simply that purely vegetarian cheeses are made with an alternative to rennet – some kind of coagulating agent made from fungi, molds, bacteria, yeasts or plant sources, or more likely and reliably, genetically engineered micro-organisms. Because rennet is made from the abomasum (fourth stomach) of newborn calves (or lambikins or even kids in the case of goat cheese I suppose); and it takes, we were told, 5 stomachs to produce 1 gram of rennet. And that’s enough about all that for one day.

Random walking and eating

A day of major excitement yesterday as we hopped the bus to Euro Torri to pick up some essentials at Media World and Brico and then wandered under the road to Ipercoop. Such wonders I have seen, and indeed carried home on my back.

I was intrigued by the Ipercoop’s Salvatempo, a magical wand you can employ if you are the fortunate holder of a carta sociocoop; you carry it round the store with you, pointing it at your groceries and making joyful beeping sounds, saving many tedious minutes of operazioni ripetitive.

This weekend I am suffering from il mal di gola, so have not been up to much, but here are some snaps from recent days.


Parma Torrente after a few days’ rain: feeling much more itself.


Sadly for this one’s living relatives, you can find such delicacies as pesto di cavallo or bistecca di cavallo on the menus round here.


My this was good: carpaccio of swordfish (pesce spada).

Classes in Colorno


Just another street in Parma.

Busy busy. We started classes on Wednesday. A morning of introductions where we met the faculty and staff of the university, counted our nationalities (11) and listened to 25 highly condensed life stories The teaching and administrative staff gave us a flavour of the year ahead including our field trips (stages) to France, Spain, Crete and different parts of Italy. After an introductory lunch in the ALMA cafeteria (provided by its cooking students) we had an afternoon of Italian lessons – a fairly typical mix of excruciating embarrassment and hilarity.


The back of the Reggia di Colorno, the building that houses the Colorno campus.

That evening the group was invited to an impromptu welcome gathering in Colorno where we had, naturally, a pretty stunning selection of nibbles – heavy of course on the cheeses and cured meats. Most of the students live in Parma, and it’s going to be a challenge for us to get together in the evenings with buses stopping at 6pm and taxis running €25-30 a pop. We are learning about the interesting and somewhat time consuming experience of calling Parma’s taxi dispatch service late at night, and how sometimes random the taxis’ arrival can be.


Not a bad view out the classroom window…

Day two we plunged into language classes and in the afternoon had a presentation by Cinzia Scaffidi, director of the Slow Food Study Centre in Bra. Among the many programs and projects of the movement she described, we warmed to her discussion of the Slow Fish event we’ll be taking in next May, in Genoa.


And the view out the other classroom window.

Thursday ended with American Thanksgiving dinner (Giorno del Ringraziamento) for 60, courtesy the students of the Italian masters’ program, one of the cooks and the ovens – big enough to hold two 30lb turkeys – of ALMA, and the owners of the Pub in Colorno. During the meal I asked the director of the Colorno campus, Carlo Catani, if it was true what I’d heard, that we could expect on average to gain 5kg over the course of the year. Of course not, he scoffed: on your stages (field trips), you will be much too busy to eat!


One turkey down, one turkey left.

We’ve started receiving books as well – Jane Grigson’s Vegetable Book, and Italian Cuisine: a Cultural History by Alberto Capatti and Massio Montanari. And on with the first lecture on cheese technology today, which was a crash course in the fundamentals of organic chemistry. Head spinning with talk of peptide bonds, triglycerides, protein domains and butyric and linoleic acids… I’m well ready for the weekend now.

Tartufo in Savigno


Ooh.. so glad I wasn’t driving.. where to start with this one?

Hitting the ground running, so to speak, I was invited to visit a visiting friend in Bologna, whose hostess – doing some research for her property business – whisked us off into the Apennine countryside to see a few sights before hitting the main event, a truffle (tartufo) festival in Savigno.

Three days of truffles and mulled wine (vin brule/vino caldo) had obviously warmed everyone (and their dog) into a mellow crowd. We wandered around admiring used leather coats, antiques and knick-knacks, truffle spades; little moss thrones and glass domes holding nuggets of black and white truffles; truffle oil, truffle cheese/polenta/rice/you name it, vintage cars, cauldrons of hot wine, caldarroste – ovens of roasting chestnuts, and much else besides. The place was heaving with visitors. And the tables were still, late on the last day, still heaped with cheese, meats, vegetables…


Chestnuts rocking and roasting.


Cheese, cheese, cheese!


Lotsa lovely squash, from an organic farm.


Tower of power: no disputing the real thing, and thrilling to be in its home town. I tasted both 12 month old and 36 month old Parmigiano-Reggiano… and wanted to take it all home with me.

As we wandered, I was introduced to a cook from Centro Natura, a vegetarian restaurant (and much else besides) in Bologna. Must make a visit there. She said they develop the menu each morning, based on the ingredients to hand, and accommodate both celiacs and more relaxed vegetarian diners alike each day.

And tonight I dined at La Filoma in Parma where as we considered the menu we were presented with a glass of prosecco and a plate of airy, crunchy, heavenly cheese fritters, before diving into a warm fish salad (fish, potatoes, courgettes/zucchini, tomatoes) and then (for me) a melting pair of beautifully seasoned pork medallions, and for my dining companion a tender leg of rabbit.

Fast Train Slow


Ever feel small? (Santa Maria della Steccata)

Here I am in my very own microcosm, in the Hotel Torino. Very central, as promised in the writeup on TripAdvisor’s Parma forum, and my room faces a courtyard so should be nice and quiet (if not large and spacious) — providing no more tipsy Englishwomen choose to have lengthy late night telephone conversations facing their windows. No in-room internet as I’d had (for a price) in Paris, but a reasonable connection in the lobby, free for the first half hour.

It was a long trip from Paris yesterday, and a grey and wet one despite a few glimpses of blue sky on departure. I left the hotel about seven-thirty in the morning – having left the nice young man at the hotel laughing and shaking his head in delight at the idea of anyone going off to study food in Italy – and threw myself and my gigantic bags on the TGV service to Milan in good time. Alas it was not so TGV today. We limped along the tracks near Chambery until we ground to a halt in a tunnel. Periodic updates in French were not overly enlightening, although if my ears and tragic grasp of French did not deceive me, the reason for our delay was finally given as “leaves on the line”?? Whatever it was, it put us 45 minutes behind time, and that killed any chance of my making my connection to Parma scheduled for 20 minutes after arrival. By the time we got to Milan we were about an hour and a quarter late, and there was a terrifying throng gathered on the platform for the return journey.

I managed to get myself onto a new train, one of the first to board, and not a baggage rack to be seen (lucky for the health and safety of my fellow passengers I lack anywhere near the upper body strength and sang-froid to attempt to put these babies in an overhead rack) so I claimed a couple of spots for me and my bags – lucky thing as the car had filled to overflowing by departure time – passengers perching in the hallways. A kind man sitting next to me told me he too was getting off in Parma and to follow him. He raised a quizzical eyebrow at the heft and girth of my bags and quipped, perhaps you have brought enough for one day? He said he’d lived all his life in Parma and couldn’t think of anywhere better, that I’d like it: it is very quiet, the people are very nice, if you ride a bicycle people will wave you through, and yes it is the best food in Italy. And helped me haul my bags up and down stairs and rather proved his point about the kindness of the locals, I thought.

When I arrived at the hotel, around 7pm, the taxi driver pointed to the outermost unzipped compartment of my backpack and I thought uh oh now what was in there.. probably some light-fingered onlooker in Milano Centrale wondered the same, but fortunately my travel paranoia is such that all valuables were deep inside inner pockets, the somewhat trickier zip to the compartment holding the iPod wasn’t touched, and I think nothing has gone astray.

After checking in I realised I’d had nothing to eat since the edible but unremarkable panino sold me by the hatchet-faced woman serving what passed for food on the train, and happened upon a snack bar on Piazza Garibaldi, the town square. I had a large and welcome salad with a gorgeous glass of red wine, gazing out at the flocks of cyclists – not a helmet or a reflective vest among them – and figured that was that for one day.


Torrente Parma – more a lawn than a torrent at the moment.


Today after early rain the sun came out to shine on a first ramble through my new home town.