Parmesan!

Don’t let the imposters win. You are encouraging their success when you order a rum and Coke and settle for Shasta. When you allow people to offer a cup of java, then serve up Folgers crystals. The worst offense is to say “pass the Parmesan” as you’re looking at a rotund shaker of a fluffy white substance like artificial snow. These substances are not so much fake as they are shadows of a truer form. The cheese in that shaker at the pizza joint or in the green cylinder jar at the supermarket has almost nothing to do with the cheese it purports to be. Unfortunately, the phony version has more fame, not unlike a certain leggy, blonde Law & Order actress with the same name as a certain short, sassy, rakish food writer. But if the masses knew the flavorful and amazing truth about the original, they’d shun the green jar and grab their graters.

“Parmesan” has unfortunately become a general term for Italian-style grated cheese. Parmigiano-Reggiano is the true name for the cheese you think you shake so well. Like Champagne or Bourbon, Parmigiano-Reggiano is named for the area in which it is produced, in the River Po River valley in Italy’s Emilia-Romagna province. The same cheese produced outside this region is called Grana Padano. The art of the cheesemaker has remained the same for more than eight hundred years, and it all began in a place called Parma.

A story from Boccaccio’s Decameron, written around 1350, tells of a city by a mountain made of cheese. The good people of the mountain did nothing but make macaroni and ravioli, rolling the gifts down the peak to the hungry below. Ah, Parma. History is littered with instances of the appreciation of Parmigiano, in Italy and abroad. Taillevent, one of the first French cookbook authors, uses the cheese abundantly. Some accounts of Molière’s death witness him asking for a slice of the heavenly cheese on his deathbed.

In 1400, the humanist Platina observed that Italy’s most renowned cheese, Parmigiano, was also called maggengo because it was produced in the month of May. By his time, the process had already been perfected for some two hundred years, and it is the identical process that is used today.

Today’s artisans could be tempted by mechanization, but most still use milk, heat, and tradition to turn a good cheese.
High-quality milk is one of the secrets to parm. The cows eat well, munching young grasses, herbs, and flowers in the spring and robust grasses and straw come autumn. Cheeses produced with spring milk have a lower butterfat content and may be drier and lighter than winter’s, but will also have a more delicate flavor. Milk’s butterfat is highest in the fall, lending the cheeses of October and November a deeper color and more intense flavor.

The weather in Emilia-Romagna is another deciding factor. The humidity and variations of temperature help activate enzymes in the cheese that are responsible for creating its unique characteristics of flavor, color, aroma, and granular texture. Patience is another virtue of true Parmigiano, which takes from twelve to thirty-six months to mature. The standard chunk you buy will likely have basted in Italian breezes for eighteen to twenty-four months. Kraft proudly ages the stuff in its green jars for six months.

The final factor is love. It’s the love of a process that requires myriad subtle and delicate operations in which a tiny variance could affect quality and value. Rigorous testing by the Consorzio del Parmigiano-Reggiano, a group that’s quite serious about cheese, decides whether the labor of love is a worthy one. If a one-year sampling of cheese fails the standard testing, it is stripped of its rind and not allowed export.

Parmagiano-Reggiano is born as a seventy- to eighty-pound wheel whose rind is iron-branded with the Consorzio-approved stamp, the farm code and the date of production. By law, every piece cut from the wheel should have some marking on it (make sure you can see the rind on any piece you buy, or see the wheel from which it was cut). Then the cheese will fall into one of three categories. “Prima Stagionatura” identifies a cheese with a minor defect, but one still good enough for market; its rind is marked with parallel lines. “Extra” gets an oval stamp certifying at least eighteen months of ageing. “Export” is stamped as such and signifies first-grade quality after eighteen months.

While most think of Parmigiano in its grated form, let’s please think outside the shaker. This cheese is wonderful shaved into thin slices and eaten with fresh fruit—pears and Granny Smith apples are ideal. There is nothing better than a beef carpaccio with capers and thin, blond shavings of Parm, which, at Arezzo Ristorante, is something they do fairly well. I recently watched (and later dreamt of) my chef-husband tossing warm fettuccini in the belly of a carved-out wheel of Parmigiano, the cheese melting slightly and coating the pasta.
Want your own wheel? It can cost $800 to $1,200, without shipping. Scott Pikovsky of Great Ciao imports all sorts of crazy goodness from the Mediterranean area. Otherwise, for a slice here and there try some of the local Italian shops like Delmonico’s or Buon Giorno Italia. Even Lunds and Byerly’s have stepped up with good cheese. If you think grating your own is a bother, and you’re tempted to grab the “domestic Parmesan,” you may want to recall a colorful proverb from your childhood: Mr. Yuk is mean, Mr. Yuk is green.