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Ric and I are back from a great weekend in Parma! We ate some amazing food and really enjoyed our tours of the cheese and balsamic vinegar factories (although they were a little small to really be called factories). A couple things we learned from the cheese place:
1. Only natural ingredients are used to make Parmigiano-Reggiano througout the entire process. Even the equipment is cleaned with all natural ingredients (no chemicals). The cows don't get any horomoes or antibiotics or anything to increase their production. And all that goes into the cheese is milk, which comes freshly eash day from different local farms, whey, and enzymes from a cow's stomach. That's it.
2. The process is VERY closely monitored by the Parmigiano-Reggiano consortium and the only official cheese comes from a D.O.P region where the consortium has complete control. The cheese comes from thousands of producers, large and small, but the only way to tell which one a specific wheel came from is by a number stamped on it. There's no other branding. Most people find their favorite maker and buy it directly from a "factory" like the one we visited.
3. The one we visited is considered a medium sized maker and they produce about 10 wheels per day.
4. The quality of the cheese changes throughout the year becuase the milk changes - it's fattier in the winter when the calves need more nurition and more watery in the summer when they need hydrating. Of course nothing is added to the milk to balance this out, so the cheese is just different based on when it's made. Best to look at the rind for cheese made in the winter (each wheel has the month and year it was made imprinted on the side).
5. The cheese maker we met was celebrating his 49th birthday and had been doing this for 31 years (since he was 18). He works every single day, including weekends, and in the past 5 years has only had 5 days off. They're having a hard time finding young Italians to continue these jobs becuase they're so intense, so many of the people learning are Indian immigrants who are carrying on the tradition, which is centuries old (they still follow a recipe that traces back to the 1100's).
The vinegar place we went was also very interesting. True balsamic vinegar (which Modena is most well known for, not Parma) is also controlled by a consortium. They taste it all and determine whether it passes and if it gets a red, silver or gold label. The gold stuff, which is the best, costs about 80 euro per tiny bottle. But you only use a couple drops. It's almost more like syrup than what you'd think of as balsamic vinegar. And like the cheese, there's no branding to differentiate the makers. It all goes into the same bottles and the consortium does the bottling itself.
Parma itself was a beauitful city. The people were very stylish in that great Italian way that looks totally effortless. Everywhere we ate was delicious. And people were so friendly (especially to the big pregnant lady). The hotel where we stayed had a beauitful courtyard and looked almost like an apartment building.
On Sunday, as we headed back to the airport, we stopped in a town called Soranga to eat at a restaurant that Ric had read about. They didn't speak a word of English, but Ric did a great job communicating and by the end they actually thought we spoke Italian! It made us both want to do a better job actually learning (or re-learning) the language.
As always, we leave wishing that one day we'll have a house somewhere in Northern Italy where we can go for family trips. We can dream... :)
All of our pictures are up on Flickr as usual, but here are some of the highlights.
Balsamic vinegar aging. Some of it ages for more than 30 years, although there's a group in Modena that's considering adding a new category for vinegar ages 75-100 years!
At the cheese maker's
The cheese maker putting the cheese into the molds where it will sit for a couple hours to settled, let the liquid drain out, and then be put into steel molds for a couple days before taking a nice salt bath.
Coming out of the vat of whey, pulled up in linen cloths
The "factory"... each vat makes 2 wheels and there are 5 vats total
Where the magic happens...
Salt bath
Loving the cheese tour
A few pics in Parma
Our family run hotel, right next to the Doumo.
Lunch place in Soranga
Just wanted to make sure all our faithful San Francisco readers saw that Quince has opened in its new location. Since we can't be there to celebrate with Mike and Lindsay ourselves, we encourage you all to go, try it out, and report back!
Here's an article from the Chron about the restaurant's new digs: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/10/04/FD3C1A03N7.DTL
And a pic of the kitchen, which you can see from a window on the street...
The weather this weekend was gorgeous, but it's a distant memory as the cold rain rolled in to mark the start of the week. Ric and I spent a good amount of time outside, wandering through the heath and walking down to South End Green to try a new pub that came highly recommended from one of our friends. It's called The Stag and they have 53 beers from around the world, live music in the evenings, and yummy food. Here's a picture of Ric at the bar:
Continuing the eating theme (which has taken even more center stage than normal since drinking is no longer an option), we went for a lovely afternoon tea at Brown's Hotel in Mayfair. It's been around forever (hundred of years??) and was the spot of many historic events, including Teddy Roosevelt's honeymoon, the writing of "The Jungle Book" by Ruyard Kipling, and the first phone call ever made by Alexander Graham Bell. The tea lived up to expectations, especially when we realized that the food was basically "all you can eat." After we finished one plate of sandwiches, they brought another. And after we finished the second plate of scones (they were small... really) they offered to bring another. I considered saying yes and throwing them in my purse, but thought better of it. And after the mini desserts that came on the tea tray, they rolled around a cake trolley with even more choices. I was beside myself... for a pregnant lady with a sweet tooth, there really couldn't have been anything better. So we've decided to try out more afternoon tea places in the last few months of freedom that we have left. We'll report back, but Brown's is going to be hard to beat!
Finally, the weekly belly update at just past the 29 week mark...
Quick pic of Paula and I as we both near the 28 week mark!
We just got back from a wonderful weekend in Bruges. It's a tiny little city (town really) in Belgium that I didn't know much about until I saw the movie "In Bruges." Not sure if that helped tourism at all, but it did inspire me to go. So I booked a nice little weekend for Ric's birthday and we had a great time celebrating his 2-9.
Getting there was super easy... we took the Eurostar on Friday evening into Brussels, then changed to a different train and two stops later (about 1 hour) we're in the middle of Bruges. We got in fairly late (and I'm not the night owl that I used to be... ok, I never really was a night owl), so we went straight to bed. The next day we kicked things off with a yummy breakfast at our B&B, which looked like an old Flemish farmhouse and only had 3 rooms.
Then we went for a boat ride through the canals and got a great view of the gorgeous buildings from the water. I was really amazed by the architecture and how clean and nice everything looked. They've done a great job maintaining the character of the place, but so many of the buildings look like they've been redone and were really, really nice. After the boat ride we pretty much wandered around for the rest of the day. There was a pretty park, lots of pubs and restaurants, and tons of tourists (more than I expected).
Dinner was one of the highlights - we ate at a three Michelin starred restaurant called De Karmeliet, which is only the second restaurant we've been to with that many stars. It was an 8 course meal that lasted 4 and half hours. Every course was delicous - from the salmon to the shrimp to the venison to the cheese course and BOTH desserts. But four and a half hours was a little much for us. I know that they're trying to space things out, give each course time to digest, and the pacing is supposed to be a science. But pretty much whenever we eat at a nice place with a long tasting menu, I find myself wishing they would just bring the courses faster. Once, in Berlin, we timed it and a full hour passed between two of the courses. That meal lasted about five hours total. I'm all for savoring a great meal, but back to the whole "night owl" thing, when the clock strikes 11 or 12pm I start to lose my focus. Anyway, the food was amazing and the service was great too. Would definitely recommend it.
After considering how we could move to Bruges and both find jobs there, we realized it was time to head back on Sunday afternoon. All in all, a great weekend and a very fun place to visit that's such an easy trip from London.
Here are a few pics! More on FLICKR
Our B&B, the No. 11 Guesthouse
Our room
Pretty park
An entire mass of people who all knew the dance/workout moves that the two people on stage were doing. It was like a flash mob workout!
In the streets of Bruges
Gorgeous buidlings
The famous bell tower from the movie "In Bruges"
Funny dog in the window... we thought it was a statue until he moved...
On the water
