It’s a workaday ingredient, but are you aware of the months of care and attention that go into making a wheel of parmesan? Sue Quinn travelled to Parma to find out more – and our food team have created all-new recipes to celebrate Italy’s king of cheeses
food stories.
round the city of Parma in northern Italy, parmigiano reggiano is more than just cheese: it’s part of daily life. On average, the locals consume 500g each of the umami-rich stuff every week. “We put parmigiano reggiano in almost everything,” Maria Chiara Passani from the Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium (PRC) tells me. “We use it like salt. It’s in our DNA.”
But parmesan producers have had it tough in the past 10 years. An earthquake, recession, Covid and a series of audacious parmesan robberies (the 40kg wheels of cheese are worth around €700 each) have troubled producers. And now there’s another growing problem: counterfeit parmesan.
The name parmigiano reggiano is protected under EU law, which means it can only be used for cheese made to the exacting standards demanded by the PRC. But outside Europe, cheap imitations can legally be labelled ‘parmesan’ – in one case a US version was found to contain wood shavings. “We estimate the total value of counterfeit cheese sold as almost that of the real thing,” says the PRC’s Igina Morinia. The counterfeit stuff is sold at much lower prices, too, so the total amount sold is more than the real stuff. Igina adds that millions of Euros will be spent this year tackling the problem (they are currently trialling putting microchips into the wheels so they can be identified as genuine cheeses).
We British have a hearty appetite for the real stuff – we’re the fourth largest market for it, in fact. Fourth generation cheese maker Damiano Delfante is gratified that British food lovers appreciate parmesan because he literally devotes his life to making it. The father of four works from 5am to 9pm every day, including Christmas, in his small dairy in the foothills of the mountains near Parma.
Milk is collected twice a day from 10 small nearby dairy farms. Cows that produce milk for parmigiano reggiano must eat a rich diet of local hay and grains, in accordance with detailed rules set out by the PRC. This means farmers can spend more than €10 per day per cow just on feed. Cows here generally don’t graze on open pasture; instead, they’re kept in barns with access to outside pens. When I ask about this, farmers explain there’s a shortage of open pasture and no tradition of grazing in Italy. Moreover, they sa
