Exploring Emilia-Romagna

We spent the first chunk of our time in Emilia-Romagna in the Po river valley home to some of the best food in Italy. The full album for Italy is available.

We started by taking a train out of Switzerland to Tirano Italy. The train ride was spectacular winding its way down the mountains by many gorgeous glaciers. From Tirano, we took another train to Milan. It was a slow going, cramped train but had some nice scenery as it made its way down Lake Como. In Milan, we split with Ginny and Tom as they rented a car to go to Lake Garda, while we continued on by train. We debated popping over to the Milan cathedral as it is supposed to be one of the most stunning in the world. However, given the amount of travel we were doing, we decided against it. Instead, we just took the next high speed train to Bologna. From the train station, we took the bus to the airport to pick up a rental rental car and then drove to our agriturismo near Reggio Emilia. 

It was my first experience driving in Italy and I was to find that it is fairly stressful. The rural roads are barely larger than a lane but in both direction with sharp ditches on either side. It's a little antsy passing somebody when you're both going 60kph. The freeways are more chaotic than I'm used to because each lane has a different speed limit, 30kph different and of course people don't actually follow that limit. The net result is that there is a very large variance in speed of cars so there's a lot of passing. In between the freeway and the rural roads, there are a ton of roundabouts. I got used to them fairly quickly but it made the driving feel slow because you were hitting a roundabout every 3-5 minutes and had to keep track of where to go at each point. 

The agriturismo was very nice. Called Verdenoce, it's a renovated barn with large rooms in the middle of a vineyard. We were on the top floor in a larger room than we paid for. Since we were only staying two nights, it probably made sense to give us that room to fit in other guests staying longer. Breakfasts each morning were great and consisted of eggs, bacon twice as flavorful as what you get in the US, some dehydrated zucchini drizzled with balsamic and oil and a large assortment of pastries & bread.

After dropping off our stuff at the agriturismo, it was fairly late, so we went out for dinner. We went to Ristorante Mazzalasino which was listed in one of our guidebooks. It's a locals hole in the wall restaurant just on the edge of the town. We were the first people there for the evening and had to stick our heads into the kitchen for them to open the door. Then we had some chaos trying to order because they didn't speak English and eventually had to call in one of the off-duty waiters who did. The food was excellent and very cheap. It was cooked by the matron of the family who was very friendly and accommodating. We started with an antipasta plate composed of many different cured meats from the area. Then we had some pasta. Catherine had some gluten free past that they cooked specially for her, while I had a sample of different pastas. It included raviolis of pumpkin where the pumpkin flavour just punches you in the face and others of spinnach/ricotta. For the main, we had a donkey stew, which is the speciality of the house and was great. For desert, I had a cake dripping in amaretto. Everything was accompanied by local lambrusco. In North America, we think of lambrusco as a sweet, sparkling, red wine, but the version that is drunk in the upper Poe valley is dry, low alcohol and refreshing. It was a lot of fun. Total cost for this feast: 50 euros for the two of us.

In the morning, we got up early as we had a tour scheduled on the other side of Parma (about an hour away) that started at Antica Corte Pallavicina. Antica Coreta used to be a toolhouse on the Po river in the 1400s. It's been restored and now operates as a hotel, a Michelin star restaurant (where everything is grown on premise) and producer of Culatello di Zibello.

Our tour started by going to a parmesan reggiano factory. They were finishing up making the cheese for the day. It has to be done in the morning to meet the DOC requirements. The milk is trucked to the factory the night before and sits in a vat overnight. All the milk must come from cows in the area fed on grass. In the morning, it is pumped into very large inverted copper cones where it is seeded with the previous day's production and warmed to separate the curds from the whey. Each vat produces enough for two wheels of cheese. After separating, the curds are pulled out of the vat and squeezed into molds to form the wheel. The wheels are then soaked in a 50/50 saltwater bath for a week and then aged in a barn for 18 or 24 months. During the aging time, the cheese is cleaned with brushes and turned regularly so that it doesn't get holes as it hardens. When we were there, the consortium inspectors were on-site grading the cheese and applying the parmesan reggiano seal if they met standards. To grade the cheese, they take the wheel off the shelf and hit it with a small white hammer. Based on the sound, they know how solid the cheese is and thus its grade. 

From the cheese factory, we went to the restaurant's farm. It's used exclusively to provide produce for the restaurant except for the meat that is aged. There is a climate controlled aging house for the first few months that the hams age. Culatello di Zibello is a cured ham like Prosciutto di Parma but includes only the meat of the ham instead of the whole leg like Prosciutto. Once the leg is deboned, the meat is salted and massaged with wine and then stuffed into a pig bladder and wrapped in twine. The meat is then aged for at least 12 months, close enough to the Po river to have high humidity from the fog coming off the river. This allows the beneficial mold to grow. The resulting meat is amazing and has very deep flavors. 

After leaving the farm, we went back to the castle, where the culatello are aged for most of their life in the basement. When you first enter the basement, you're assaulted by the smell of the mold. The Japanese lady who was taking with the tour with us thought it was absolutely disgusting and almost wretched. It's interesting because there are some fermented Japanese products that smell vile to me, but this cellar smelled pretty good. I guess your tastes in fermented foods is very cultural. In the cellar, there are hundreds of the meats hanging from the ceiling. Each one is about 8lbs and sells for around $300-$400. Some of them have been tagged for specific people or restaurants. We saw one tag for Alain Ducasse, the famous French chef. 

After visiting the cellar, we had a little bit of time before lunch at the restaurant, so we did the self walking tour through the flood plain near the castle. It was nice to get outside even if it was disgustingly hot. Along the way, we saw their black pigs. It's a species that was traditionally raised in the area but has almost been driven out by a white pig that grows faster. The chef at the restaurant is trying to bring them back both for tradition and because the resulting culatello has even more flavor.

Lunch was included with our tour and was in the less formal osteria version of the restaurant. It included their sweet sparkling red wine, which wasn't very good, but somehow worked really well with the culatello. The meal started with a large plate of meats, parmesan and pickled vegetables. Of course, the culatello was the star of the show. After that, I had some delicate spinach/ricotta ravioli while Catherine had a ratatouille risotto. The risotto was different, but it worked really well. The main was game hen in balsamic vinegar. Finally, for desert, I had a pastry, while Catherine got a ginormous bowl of fruit. It was just big wedges of apples, pears and oranges. We would find out later that in Italy, you aren't expected to eat the whole fruit bowl (which would have been impossible), just take what you want. It's unclear if it gets re-served to other patrons.

After stumbling out of lunch, we drove to Parma. We saw the church, including a gorgeous baptistry and then walked around town doing a little shopping for Christmas gifts. Parma's a small, quaint, town.

In the evening, we returned to the agriturismo where we got a recommendation for dinner. We ate at an Argentinean steakhouse, but it was still Italian so you could get pasta. So, I had a guitar string tagliatelle and ragu. The pasta is square in profile because it's made by making a sheet of fresh pasta and then pushing it through metal wires like guitar strings. Catherine had a fantastic steak with arugula and a balsamic vinegar sauce. On the side, we had a bunch of roasted vegetables and salad.

Our next day was focused on Modena. We drove into town in the morning and made our first stop the church. Like most medieval towns, the church is the center of life. This church includes an adjoining tower which acted as the watch tower for the town. We climbed up inside the tower, which was interesting because the stairs are on the inside of the wall but the middle of the tower is all open. From the top, there is definitely a great view of the town. Back on the ground, we tried to find the carving of a hermaphorodite on the outside of the church, which is famous, but we couldn't find it. There are a lot of other interesting figures though. From the church, we went across the palace to look at some historical rooms with paintings in them from local artists. The rooms are part of the town hall.

We had lunch at Trattoria Il Fantino, which is a low key, but very busy place. I had some piadina, which is a local Emilia-Romagna flat bread. They were served in a basked with a bunch of accompaniments including lard, a soft cheese, arugula, sliced meats and ribs braised in wine. You slice the flatbread in half and then stuff it with your choice. Each piadina was about the size of a dollar pancake. Catherine of course couldn't each the piadina, so she just had a plate of the ribs and some potatoes. We washed it down in more of the local dry Lambrusco. Very reasonable for lunch. 

From lunch, we went to Acetaia di Giorgio, a traditional balsamic vinegar house. It's the oldest house in Modena, starting commercial production in the mid 1800s. It is actually a house. Traditionally, families would make their wine in the basement and their vinegar in the attic. They only make the highest grade of vinegar, labeled Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale di Modena. It is made only of grape must that is first cooked down. Then, it is aged in a solera of barrels for 12 years or 25 years for the extra old designation. The barrels are left open so that during the summer, the vinegar slowly evaporates and condenses into a rich, tongue-ringing syrup. Each barrel in the sequences gets a little smaller because of this evaporation. Each year, some of the vinegar is removed from the oldest barrel and then replaced with vinegar from the next barrel in line. This process is repeated and then new must is added to the first barrel. The barrels can be made of different woods and so producers use different woods to bring more complexity to the flavours. The barrels are not charred the way wine or whiskey barrels are and so they can be used forever. Acetaia di Giorgio only makes 2000 bottles of vinegar a year, each of which is only 100ml large. We tasted a number of their vinegars. The 25 year was definitely more complex but there was a larger difference between the vinegar made in juniper barrels vs. the mixed barrel version. The juniper was spicier. 

After our tour, we drove to an agriturismo just outside Faenza surround by kiwi and grape orchards. This agriturismo is a restaurant and working winery. It's a little weird because they had tractors running around beside the pool and tennis courts they built for guests. When I booked the stay, they said that their restaurant would be closed so we got some recommendations from Fabio in Faenza since that's where he grew up. It turns out that we could have eaten at the agriturismo, but we went into Faenza anyways. In Faenza, we walked around town. It was very lively, especially in the main square. We also looked at some of the ceramics shops which the town is famous for. We went to La Baita for dinner. It's a deli/wine shop during the day and restaurant at night. The sommelier was very knowledgable about the wine. The area primarily grows sangiovese for the reds and so is very distinct than lambrusco territory further up the Po river. The most interesting thing we tried was a white made of Albana. It was apricoty and floral with a touch of minerality. 

Next was a morning in Ravenna. We drove into town relatively early so that we would have enough time. Ravenna is known for its mosaics. On the outside, the churches looked like the Byzantine chapel I saw in Istanbul: flying buttresses made of simple looking bricks. The insides are why the town is a Unesco heritage site. Inside, there are jaw dropping mosaics from the 800s that are still crystal clear and have lots of gold. There's a huge variety of scenes but of course, all of them are stories from the good book.

Ravenna is also home to a number of mosaic workshops. Some just create simplistic reproductions of some of the famous pieces in the churches, but others are much more unique and have true artistry. We browsed through some of them between churches. For lunch, we stopped at Osteria dei Battibecchi right across from Dante's tomb. It's a relaxed place and we took our time eating on the square outside the restaurant, complete with a bottle of prosecco.

After lunch, we went back to the car and drove to the Bologna airport where we dropped off the car, then took the bus into town and checked into our B&B. We stayed at the Christina Rossi B&B which is run by a brother and sister about our age. I think they owned the building and rented out rooms on the upper floors, while serving breakfast in their living room on the first floor. It was an interesting setup and was quite comfortable.

After checking in, we went to the two towers to meet up with Fabio, one of my roommates from Pittsburgh. He lives in Bologna and now works for a mining equipment company. He was fairly late because he ran into some serious traffic getting home from work. So in the meantime, we just watched the people, mostly students, bustling around the square.

Before dinner, Fabio gave us a whirlwind tour of downtown. There are many churches, the most interesting of which is the basilica, which has had a few foiled bombings in the last few years. The reason: it contains a picture of Mohammed being tortured in hell. The town has a lot of arch-covered sidewalks, apparently because buildings were taxed based on their square footage of the ground floor. So, people would build out over the sidewalk! No taxes, more room. He also took us to the university pub which serves bad wine but is an institution as old as the university (which was founded in 1088). It's packed every night and fairly often you can see the chancellor of the university or the mayor of Bologna hanging out.

The madonna in the church of
Santa Maria Maggiore in Ravenna. She is
depicted with a swollen face
and is thus considered a place
to pray for those with chronic health
issues.

Fabio couldn't join us for dinner as he had to get home to his wife and daughter, but he dropped us off at a classic Bologna restaurant. We had a great bottle of red wine Fabio recommended from near Faenza. For a start, we had a meat plate including a large portion of the local speciality: mortadella. Frankly, it was good in the same way a good hot dog is good, but it was still Bologna, which isn't my favorite. Next, I had tortellini in broth, which was divine. The broth was clean and flavourful and the tortellini were little pockets of meaty goodness. For the main, I had a veal dish which was basically a croque madame, but with a veal patty instead of ham. It was tasty, but was a very heavy dish with a heavy sauce. For desert, we had a very sharp lemon sorbet, which acted as a great digestif to cut through the heavy food.

The next morning, we had our cooking class. It was a private class with three dishes. We specifically wanted to learn how to do fresh, gluten-free pasta so we did a tagliatelle with ragu, a chestnut gnocchi and poached pears for desert. We made the tagliatelle using a gluten free pasta flour and super rich eggs. The flour was heavy on the starch, so it was dry and you used less of it, but it also had a lot of psyllium husk and a little xantham gum. Those two binders (along with the quality of the eggs) were probably the key. Our instructor actually said that the eggs were special pasta eggs. I know that in the US some chefs will add extra yolks to get a similar effect to Italian eggs. The ragu was all about the meat. There's a touch of tomato paste, but other than that, it's just sofrito, some ground meat (pork and beef), a rich chicken and beef broth and some salt. No pepper. And of course a couple of hours of low heat cooking. We made the pasta and rolled it out using rolling pins, which was a first for me. It wasn't that hard using a pasta rolling pin because it is so long and has enough weight that you barely push down on it.

The chestnut gnocchi  was made of just waxy potatoes, chestnut flour and eggs. We formed them using a fork to get the ridges and pick up the sauce. They were very easy to make. The sauce was a two part one. The bottom of the dish was a parmesan cream, made of just those two ingredients warmed up. Then the gnocchi was tossed in a porchini, broth and onion sauce. Having two sauces was an interesting approach and it worked very well.

For desert, the poached pears were done in red wine spiced with warm spices, thyme and bay. The herbs added another layer of the flavour which was really nice. It was served with a lemon pudding, but we didn't cook the corn starch long enough and it was very thick. We could have done without, or with a very light lemon curd to contrast with the richness of the pears.

Of course, lunch was eating the food we had just prepared. Can't go wrong there. After that, we took a cab to the train station and then took the high speed train to Venice for the last stop on the trip.