Emilia Romagna Italy in seven luxurious flavors

Foodies talk about the products of Emilia Romagna with religious admiration. Cheese cathedral. The wine cellar of heaven. God-given truffles.

Flavors that have endured for centuries, sometimes millennia: balsamic vinegar, prosciutto, parmigiana reggiano, lambrusco, pasta, tomatoes and truffles. Gourmet directory of 26 food museums, 24 DOC wines, plus many festivals of prosciutto, truffles and more.

Throw in the dramatic architecture of Bologna, Modena and Parma, with the soundtrack of the opera, and Emilia Romagna is a dream destination for the ultimate foodie trip.

Balsamic vinegar

Drop the vinegar. They just call this round balsamic as a balm that soothes and restores: even in the price.

True balsamic, like good wine, has a protected origin, DOC. If you put a bottle of balsamic vinegar in the supermarket trolley, to be used as a salad dressing, it cannot be one of the best in the region.

The creators of the balsamic state that there is only one ingredient: wine boiled for hours. That’s not true, it’s simple. When the bottle is stored for 12 or 25 years, time and care are also key ingredients. Every day the barrels are checked and turned frequently.

Such vintages are not used as salad dressing. Balsamic drizzled over aged Parmigiana Reggiano is a starter. Drizzled into strawberries, ice cream or panna cotta for dessert. For many, a drizzle of balsamic 12 years over mature Parmigiana Reggiano “La sua morte”, as good as it gets in this life, the perfect pairing.

In Modena, the home of Ferrari, the style is also vinegar: the beautiful round bottle was created by the car designer in 1987.

One of the long-standing traditions is to place a balsamic battery, a barrel set, to celebrate the birth of a baby. As the child matures, so does the balsamic.

Prosciutto

In Emilia Romagna, the conversation of the cafe community often boasts about how the city has the best prosciutto.

View of Modena Cathedral in the distance from the tower. Paintings around one of the doors, probably from the 12th century, show a peasant calendar.

As the barren season continues in January, diligent farmers must carve up pig’s feet to produce healthy prosciutto to see the family through the hungry winter months.

The fog of the Po River, the same fog that allegedly saved Modena from the hordes of Atila the Hun, contributed to the healing process. Food is history in Emilia Romagna: history is food.

Parmigiana Reggiani

In this area they don’t say cheese when it’s time to pose for a photo they say, “Parmigiana Reggiano”.

Remember that you are on a “farm”. Never say “cheese factory.” Making Parmigiana Reggiano, is a hands-on, artisan skill. The cheesemaker is like a muscular midwife giving birth to two 50-pound wheels of cheese known as twin girls.

Originally, Benedictine monks aimed to make cheese last longer. After being soaked in brine, which takes nine months to seep through to the center, large wheels of cheese are stored in cheese cathedrals. The wheels are turned every week, ideally sweating over two summers. In fact, there is a silence of the cathedral, because it is not allowed to talk among the cheeses if it spreads the infection.

Skilled inspectors gently tap the cheese with a hammer, the percussion of a cheese orchestra, to check for holes. In two years, the cheese will drop from 50kg to 40kg. As it ages, the structure changes, giving more crystals.

Young cheeses go to retailers, while others go to cheese banks, often owned by banks, where they are kept as collateral for farmers’ loans. Three- and four-year-old cheeses are used to fill pastas such as tortellini.

Lambrusco

Forget the cheap, sweet, fizzy pop memories you drank at teenage parties.

Original Lambrusco, a wine that comes from six different appellations in Emilia Romagna, is a drier and more sophisticated wine.

“Nose of citrus and pomegranate. Clear acidity. Impressive length. I’m taking my fourth bite,” said Filipino Bartolotto as he guided us through the first Lambrusco. “Even for professionals this is a hard wine to spit out,” says the master taster and wine journalist.

“Now we go to another world,” he said taking a glass of red Lambrusco. “Prunes and nuances of beetroot. An ink-driven nose.”

Raising a glass to Lambrusco, “Chin-chin,” he exhorts. Before heretically recommending some Lambrusco wine paired very well with … pizza.

A dynamic young winemaker takes on Lambrusco. Also using SuFriGradi, the Grand Prix F1 term for a car that accelerates to peak performance, the wine bottle is the same height as a Ferrari F1 piston.

Barilla pasta

Early in the morning, when you walk through Modena’s grand arched porticoes, peek through the restaurant windows to see women flirting, nudging and shaping the day’s pasta.

For Barilla, pasta is an art. He worked with Fellini and Lynch to bring art house production values ​​to advertising.

At Academia Barilla, in Parma, chef Marcello prefers al dente pasta, with a thin bite. He rejected the Neopolitans who cooked the pasta so briefly that it was crispy and also despised the Milanese who went beyond al dente to soft.

In Parma, Barilla’s original shop is open to visitors to learn the history of Italy’s most famous pasta. Within walking distance is the Academia Barilla and its library of 26,000 food-themed books and 5,000 menus: open to the public, by appointment, on Mondays.

However, Marcello thought beyond the box, making pasta again. Fusilli is overcooked for 25 minutes, cooled in ice water, dried in the oven at 50 centigrade and finally fried for just three seconds making popcorn like a snack.

Tomato pepper

Throughout the Po River area, 400 tomato farmers want to be awarded Golden Tomatoes from
Mutti. The competition for €7m paid annually in incentives encourages suppliers to produce the best fruit for Mutti’s chopped tomatoes and tomato paste.

In 1899 the Mutti family decided to focus on tomatoes and now the latest project has created the cafeteria “A place to eat”. Soon, the building designed by Carlo Ratti with a tomato floor, will open in the evening as a restaurant overseen by Famiglia Cerea: a famous name that guarantees serious quality.

The entrance to the cafeteria, with an echo of Andy Warhol’s iconic work, is a wall of Mutti cans.

Truffles

There is a mystique to truffle hunting. Luigi Dattioli, now managing Appennino Foods, searched for a year before his first truffle.

Even a good truffle hunter with a lifetime of experience can draw a blank when the Lagotta Romagnolo dog gnaws among the roots of poplar, oak, hazelnut and hornbeam trees.

Many truffle hunters like Lagottas women, they say they focus more than men, keep treating mortadella or prosciutto in their pockets to distract them from the truffles they find.

In the world hierarchy of truffles, white truffles are the most valuable, fetching up to €5,000 per kilo in a fluctuating market. However, only a few hunters can survive on truffles alone.

A culinary hotspot

The rich land, Emilia Romagna, crossing diagonally across Northern Italy from the Adriatic to the Mediterranean makes the epic epicurean. It is home to Bologna, which is claimed to be the food capital of the world. However, Parma is designated by UNESCO as a world gastronomic community.

The ancient Via Emilia hosts a line of towns and cities, each with its own gastronomic heritage, creating Italy’s Food Valley. One of the planet’s culinary hotspots.

Disclosure: Our visit is sponsored by Emilia Romagna Tourism.

Michael Edwards

Michael Edwards is a travel writer from Oxfordshire, England. Although Michael had his first travel piece published nearly four decades ago, he still finds new luxury destinations to visit and write about.