Imbottigliare – Bottle up

As I make our way down along the long narrow, poorly illuminated corridor I can hear bottles clanking. I turn the corner and immediately I’m hit with the distinctive smell of musty grapes. Carlo’s already at work. We have over a dozen demijohns to siphon and bottle – a few bottles shy of a thousand – so there’s no time to waste.

Everyone that lives in the provinces bottles their own wine. Whether you make it yourself or buy it from one of the dozens of small cantine within a 10-minute drive from home, bottling is an annual ritual. Two makes bottling light work. Like a conveyor belt, one to act like a pump attendant -filling bottles, from one to the next, using a spotlight so that each bottle is filled to just the right level – the other to place and secure caps, crate up and make space for the next demijohn.

Assuming no spillage, a 28 liter demijohn yields approximately 36 bottles of wine, plus a couple of glasses. Carlo never spills a drop. And the two extra glasses are essential for quality control. Least that’s what Carlo keeps telling me. Having controlled the quality on six demijohns we stop for lunch – everything stops for lunch in Italy.

A bowl of anolini (small stuffed pasta cooked in chicken broth), a pork chop with green salad and another bottle of wine later, we resume. The shelves now full, I start filling empty wine crates. By mid afternoon we move on to the white wine – more bottles and more quality control. The wines in Piacenza seldom ever receive more than a passing reference in international wine circles. Guttornio, a dry local red, is more often than not served slightly fizzy and chilled. The predominant local white, ortrugo, is also dry and sparkling. Few of the wines produced in the province ever travel beyond its border. Wines more suited to ‘quaffing’ than serious consideration, is the standard response from the wine elite.

There may be an element of truth in that, although times have changed and under the radar some seriously good wines are now being produced in the province. But that’s another story and one that, no doubt, I’ll come back to at a later date. However, for now, it is probably fair to say that for many locals wine is seen as lubrication (albeit a very pleasing lubrication) for the not so humble food that is served on a daily basis. But it’s lubrication not without purpose. It’s lubrication that feeds a tradition. There was a time when it would have been inconceivable to imagine a meal in Italy without wine on the table. For the most part that wine would seldom have cost more than the time and effort required to tend to a vine, crush grapes and siphon the product into a bottle. And for the most part it would probably have been bottled within shouting distance of the table. What makes that wine special is not the label – should someone ever have bothered to attach one – but what it has always represented: a way of life.  

The priest’s hat

When I was younger it was traditional after midnight mass on Christmas Eve to go to the bar, drink a glass of Spumante (sparkling wine) and ‘eat the priest’. The joke is a reference to prete (priest), a type of salami which owes its name to the fact that it is shaped like a hat that was worn by priests.

Prepared in the winter months, the recipe depends on the individual cook or butcher. Generally, however, it is made from a mix of pork shoulder and shin, along with pieces of rind, neck, head and other bits. The whole is mixed to a medium grind and left to marinate in spices for 10 days. The mince is then placed into a casing of rind from the shin and stitched to form a triangular purse. Afterwards, it is pressed between two pieces of wood and left to dry out and age in a temperature controlled environment for a period of between 2 and 3 weeks. It is then cooked slowly in boiling water for between 4-5 hours and served with a salsa verde.

Today, at November Porc in Polesine in the Province of Parma, the focus of celebrations was on the cooking of a gigantic prete.  Normally a quiet town along the banks of the river Po, the event attracted huge crowds, so many people in fact that it was all but impossible just to get a look in. It might well have something to do with the fact that once cooked the prete was being given away for free. The idea of standing in a queue for 5 hours didn’t quite appeal to me so I contented myself with buying a regular sized prete from one of the many gastronomic stalls.  Now I’m off home to put in a pot to boil.    

Sirloins, roast's and mince

There are certain food rituals that I’ve learned whilst living in the provinces. One of them is going out early on a Saturday morning and buying a year’s supply of beef – just under 100 kilos of it! Whatever happened to going to the supermarket and buying a steak you might ask? The answer is this: it just doesn’t make good economic sense. But more than that, you have the satisfaction that comes with choice – knowing, that is, where your meat comes from, what the animal has been fed on and how it’s been reared. And, another thing I’ve learned over the years living here, eating well doesn’t have to cost the earth (and I mean that both figuratively and literally).  

This is how it works. Three or four friends get together and go visit their local cattle farmer. They say, ‘we’d like to buy some meat please’. About a month later one of said friends turns up at the door with a bag containing your share of the offal – tongue, liver, tripe etc., etc. That evening, everyone eats liver and onions. A few weeks later, having allowed the meat time to age, those same three friends meet early one morning at the local bar, drink coffee and then drive into the mountains to visit the local butcher. They each come equipped with a dozen plastic crates, 6-8 packets containing freezer bags of assorted sizes and a permanent marker. The next stage takes time and isn’t for the squeamish. It takes the butcher and his son approximately 5 hours to carve and portion the animal.  The result is dozens of assorted bags containing all manner of cuts including sirloin steaks, fillet steaks, frying steak, various roasting joints, mince, braising and stewing joints and meat for making broth.  

Italy has a 50% deficit in meat production which means that meat produced in the country comes at a premium. Italians, generally, prefer to put their faith in Italian produce and, whenever they can, they buy Italian. But doing so at the supermarket can be extremely expensive, especially if you eat a lot of beef. Hence, it’s much more economical to get together once a year and buy a whole cow – from tail to hoof to head!

The 6 main indigenous varieties of cattle raised for meat in Italy are Chianina (from which comes the famous Tuscan fiorentina), Marchigiana, Maremmana, Piemontese, Podolico and Romagnola. Among cows raised for milk production in Italy, 3 foreign breeds (Italian Freisian, Holstein and Italian Brown cattle) produce 90% of the officially controlled production, with over 20 indigenous breeds producing the remainder. There are, in addition, numerous local breeds for both milk and meat production for which there has been a surge lately of renewed interest. This can be attributed to an increased demand amongst Italian consumers to know the provenance of what they are eating and for quality. This is welcome news as many of the lesser known breeds of indigenous cattle were quite simply facing extinction.   

As for my friends and I, we each pack something in the region of 85 kilos worth of beef into the boot. There are few prizes for guessing what everyone’s having for dinner tonight! 

Persimmons and fog

Persimmons and fog, two sure signs that the autumn is waning and winter is just around the corner.  My home town of Castell’Arquato is on the fringes of the bassa padana, or Po Basin, otherwise known as Europe’s biggest natural fog trap.

The fog here is relentless. It can lie for days on end. Luckily, as I said, I live on the very edge of the basin and from time to time we get a break in the weather – not always, just from time to time. I’m not complaining because travel just a few miles down the road to the neighbouring market town of Fiorenzuola and it’s not unusual for the fog to make camp for 10 days at a time. I feel sorry for my neighbours. Indeed, just a few more miles further down the road, along the banks of the River Po, the fog’s so dense that it only takes minutes to soak to the skin.

But then again, if we didn’t have to suffer these unique climatic conditions, our local cured meats would be much the worse for it. The humidity in the air, they say, contributes as much to the local cuisine as does the pig.

As if by way of compensation, once the fog settles down, it means that the persimmons are just about ready to eat. Persimmon, or kaki trees, are grown throughout the region. How they got here, I can’t say for sure. The tree didn’t arrive in Europe until quite recently – some time in the mid-19^th century. Yet despite their late arrival, they are hugely popular. On the other side of the Po, in Romagna and in Campania, kaki are cultivated commercially.

Here everyone seems to have a persimmon tree or two in their garden. They yield a lot of fruit and require minimal maintenance. We tend to pick the fruit just before it fully matures, allowing the kaki to ripen slowly in the cantina. They are ready to eat when bright orange, meltingly soft to the touch and deliciously sweet. They can be eaten in ice cream, as a preserve or simply on its own, as a dessert fruit (if anyone’s interested, I’ll post a recipe for the preserve early next week once the kaki are ripe enough). As I walk out the door, a whicker basket and step ladder underarm, it occurs to me that in the fog persimmons remind me of oversized Christmas decorations. Unfortunately, however, these decorations have to come down early!   

November Porc

It’s that time of the year again when the fog descends on the Bassa Padana (literally the ‘low Padana’ or put another way, the Po Basin), the locals brace themselves for the oncoming winter and pork mania takes hold. November Porc, a month of festivity dedicated to everything pork related, is held in the land of Giuseppe Verdi in the towns of Busseto, Sissa, Polesine, Zibello and Roccabianca, an area known throughout Italy for the outstanding quality of its cured meats. The festival was first held in 2002. It originated as a bet after a group of local salami makers returning from the October beer festival in Germany decided it would be a good idea to hold a festival of their own in November – hence, November Porc. 

The challenge for the organizers was how to sell a festival in November in an area that was renowned for its dense fog. Fog and cured meat products go hand-in-hand in the Bassa Padana. Local environmental, ecological and climatic conditions are considered paramount to developing the distinctive tastes and flavours of the area’s cured meats. Among the most renowned types of cured meat produced in the area are culatello – which many consider the King of Italian cured meats – various types of salami including strolghino (a type of thin salami made from the off cuts of the culatello), spalla cotta (a cooked ham), spalla cruda (a cured ham) and mariola (a cooked sausage).  

Amongst the highlights of this year’s planned festivities are a Mc Porc American-style sandwich van, several master classes in salami and Parmesan cheese making, the making of a gigantic mariolone – cooked salami – in addition to a world record attempt at making the longest salami strolghino – a title the would-be world record breakers held back in 2003. Other regular features will include street artists, live music and gastronomic stands. The official game of the festivities is the Tiro al Salame (throw the hoop around the salami), which was selected by a local youth cultural club known as The Connoisseurs of the Pig!

Yesterday’s inaugural ceremony was held in the town of Busseto in the Province of Parma. The streets were crowded, the air filled with the aroma of pork BBQ’s and in the early evening a dense, impenetrable fog made a dutiful appearance. I’ll be following future events throughout the month and reporting back every week. However, should you want to make a personal visit entry if free and the festivals are being held at the following locations:

5^th and 6^th November 2011 – Sissa, Parma

12^th and 13^th November 2011, Polesine, Parma

19^th and 20^th November 2011, Zibello, Parma

26^th and 27^th November 2011, Roccabianca, Parma

The mushrooms are back!

Today was a good day. I found mushrooms today. Porcini mushrooms that is, Italy’s favourite foraged food. I became hooked six years ago. I’d gone out with my wife’s uncle, Giacomino. At the time, I saw it as a walk in the woods… but it became much more than that.

Porcini mushrooms, from the boletus group - ceps in English, simply funghi in Italian or, believe it or not, ‘Fonz’ (how cool is that?) in the local dialect - are Italy’s most loved wild mushroom. They can’t be cultivated and there is no other type of mushroom that comes close. The best of ‘the best’ are the cep mushrooms of Borgotaro, the only mushroom to have earned protected status under the EU’s Designated Food Protection Scheme. And here’s the thing – Borgotaro, in the neighbouring province of Parma, is less than an hour’s drive from my doorstep!

Today was a good day because these are the first mushrooms of the autumn season. It’s been a bad year generally for mushrooms. It was a frustrating summer season, blighted by high temperatures, high winds and very little rainfall. Hours spent trawling through the woods resulted in little reward. So that makes these particular mushrooms even more special. And what’s more, I didn’t find them in Parma. Nor did I find them in my home province. I found them on an impromptu trip in the mountains above Lake Como. I won’t say where exactly as that would be giving the game away. Suffice to say, mushrooms are growing and every indication is, there’s more to come. So keep tuned, I'll be back…