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food & poetry, but mostly the poetry of food

Food • Writing • Poetry

Hmm… what’s wrong with this picture…

Enjoying the walk back to class. Postprandial view: fountain at the Reggia di Colorno.

Week two has started at the University of Gastronomic Sciences, and we’re deep into microbiology and the technology of cheese. A classmate has thrown down the gauntlet and invited me to find poetry in that.. but first I must master the terminology. No easy thing. But perhaps by the end of the week I’ll know my triglycerides from my diglycerides and my casein from my hydrolytic enzymes. Yessir… thank the lords ‘n ladies of technology for Wikipedia is all I can say. And bless the foresight and generosity of Douglas Goff for creating the Dairy Science and Technology website.

And thank heavens for email. One of my correspondents reliably informs me that at the moment a company in the UK is being hauled over the coals for calling their product “Welsh Dragon Sausages” on the grounds that it is not a true description of the contents. Apparently a commentator on this topic noted that it had blown the cold wind of fear into the makers of shepherd’s pie, angel cakes and chocolate brownies.

Owing to my continuing throat ailment I stayed in tonight and had some nourishing soup. Not chicken soup which I’m sure really does cure everything, but some rocket soup, a kind of vegetable jet fuel I’m hoping, and nice to eat while you catch up on the story of Elizabeth Smart and George Barker:

Rocket Soup

1 tbsp butter
1 large shallot, minced
1/4 cup minced fresh fennel
1 small carrot, minced
1 medium potato, diced
3 cups vegetable broth
2 cups rocket

• Melt the butter in a saucepan on medium and add the shallot, cooking for a couple of minutes until soft.
• Add the fennel and carrot and cook gently on low heat about 10 minutes.
• Add the potato and then the broth. Bring to the boil and then simmer another 5-10 minutes until the vegetables are soft.
• Add the rocket, cover and cook another few minutes until the rocket has wilted. Season with salt and pepper.
• I was lacking a blender, but it could (should?) be blended/pureed at this point or served as is.

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).

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.

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.

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.