This week’s TBT Cookbook Review is rather unique. I know, you are not supposed to put any qualifiers on the word “unique” but “rather” is, well, rather okay. This book has no recipes. Not a one, yet it is a book that many of you would treasure.
Almost all of us love cheese and we may have it several times a week. If not every day. At the top of the cheese lists, particularly if you relish Italian food, is Parmigiano Reggiano. Parm is a cheese with a distinguished history and a pedigree that is considered a cultural masterpiece.
Produced by the Parmigiano-Reggiano Consortium, this is a coffee table book filled with pictures of the Northern Italian landscape where this cheese masterpiece is produced. You see the countryside, the castles, the art and the cheese artisans of the region. There are chapters on the production, chemistry and even the nutrition of parm. Those chapters are short and interesting, even if you aren’t a chemistry major. It’s the pictures, the stunning pictures, that make this book so interesting.
Green fields radiate with an intensity that makes you intensely remember that last piece of parm you enjoyed. And the brown stones of the mountains and castles will remind you of that mellow exterior that protects each massive round of parm.
The best parm, of course, never leaves the region itself. It is there and nobly enjoyed by people who smile, not smirk, at the thought they are at the top of the parm food chain. Suzi and I have walked the city streets there, eaten the cheese atop pasta, and lamented that we don’t have a second home in Parmigiano Reggiano. Who knows? Suzi loves cows. Maybe we sell out of NYC, move there, begin making cheese and …
No, I think it is easier just to turn the pages of this lovely book and enjoy our memories. Better for us. And, God knows, better for the Consortium!
This week’s TBT Cookbook Review is rather unique. I know, you are not supposed to put any qualifiers on the word “unique” but “rather” is, well, rather okay. This book has no recipes. Not a one, yet it is a book that many of you would treasure.
Almost all of us love cheese and we may have it several times a week. If not every day. At the top of the cheese lists, particularly if you relish Italian food, is Parmigiano Reggiano. Parm is a cheese with a distinguished history and a pedigree that is considered a cultural masterpiece.
Produced by the Parmigiano-Reggiano Consortium, this is a coffee table book filled with pictures of the Northern Italian landscape where this cheese masterpiece is produced. You see the countryside, the castles, the art and the cheese artisans of the region. There are chapters on the production, chemistry and even the nutrition of parm. Those chapters are short and interesting, even if you aren’t a chemistry major. It’s the pictures, the stunning pictures, that make this book so interesting.
Green fields radiate with an intensity that makes you intensely remember that last piece of parm you enjoyed. And the brown stones of the mountains and castles will remind you of that mellow exterior that protects each massive round of parm.
The best parm, of course, never leaves the region itself. It is there and nobly enjoyed by people who smile, not smirk, at the thought they are at the top of the parm food chain. Suzi and I have walked the city streets there, eaten the cheese atop pasta, and lamented that we don’t have a second home in Parmigiano Reggiano. Who knows? Suzi loves cows. Maybe we sell out of NYC, move there, begin making cheese and …
No, I think it is easier just to turn the pages of this lovely book and enjoy our memories. Better for us. And, God knows, better for the Consortium!