cheese – Life In A Word

Wheels of Fortune

Late last year, Belgium found itself at the center of a culinary controversy. A local company was producing and selling a bottled version of “carbonara sauce”, much to the dismay of Italy. The Italians are fiercely protective of the recipe for spaghetti carbonara they invented a hundred years ago. Anyone familiar with the dish understands there is no such thing as carbonara sauce, because the food is the result of a slow, methodical process using fresh ingredients (including eggs and cheese), where everything melds together perfectly. You can’t just bottle it and call it the same thing.

Carbonara is a good example of a product invented in Italy and dumbed down for mass consumption. Imagine how the Italians feel about Starbucks. Somewhere on the menu you can order a shot of pure espresso but it’s the drinks with the added flavors, sugar, and milk that generate the profits. Similarly, you’ll find a dozen packages of biscotti on America’s cookie aisles, but most aren’t twice-baked like the originals nor infused with real almond liquor.

Maybe you’ve already added pizza to this list of imposters. The transformation of pizza from the Italian original to the endless varieties offered in today’s restaurants could be the subject of its own blog post (and a long one at that). Suffice it to say, the Italians are justified in turning up their noses to any product we Americans call “pizza”. Unless you’ve had a pie made with authentic Italian ingredients and prepared the same way they made it centuries ago, you really don’t know pizza.

But let’s talk about cheese, because it’s the real subject of today’s post. Parmesan cheese is another Italian original, dating back to the Middle Ages. It’s made with just three ingredients: milk, salt, and rennet (enzymes). Today you can choose from a variety of parmesan cheeses in your supermarket deli or just cheat with the big green Kraft can from the pasta aisle (which includes several added ingredients you wouldn’t be happy about). But whether from the deli or from a can, you’re not purchasing the Italian original… unless, the package includes the official logo of Parmigiano Reggiano. That, my friends, indicates the real deal. Or, if you prefer, the “big cheese”.

Parmigiano Reggiano (shall we call it “PR” from here on out? Yes, let’s do that.) is one of the most tightly regulated foods in the world. Maybe the Italians got tired of losing control of their original recipes and declared, “Uh-uh, not this one”. PR is made from milk, salt, and rennet just like the other wannabes, but with two important differences. The cows that provide two of those three ingredients graze on the pristine grass of pastures in a single tiny region of central Italy. The cows, the grass, and the milk they produce are regulated in a way that would make Fort Knox proud. It’s a small, tight supply chain of cheese production with the same quality of centuries ago.

Here’s the other important distinction between PR and the others. It must be aged at least a year (and it’s typically more like two or three) before it can be sold. That requirement gets the cheese to stand alone even more than its carefully-produced ingredients. Why? Because most companies can’t sit around for a year or more waiting for cheese to generate profits while suppliers are demanding payment on the spot. So how do the makers of PR do it? They bank their cheese. Literally.

You know you have a really good cheese when your bank is willing to take it as collateral. Here are the staggering numbers. Italy produces four million wheels of PR a year, distributed throughout the country and the world for sale. (Fact: America is the largest consumer of Parmigiano Reggiano outside of Italy.) But 500,000 of those wheels are held back and “deposited” into a local bank to age, in exchange for the cash necessary to pay the suppliers. PR is of such high quality and so carefully regulated that the banks have agreed to this unique arrangement for generations. Of course, the combined value of those wheels probably helps (well north of $300 million).

If you’d care to know more about this whole cheese-for-money thing, read the article I reference below. More importantly, if you ever come across Italy’s “Cheese Bank”, you’ll probably find the usual ATM’s, tellers, and offices, but at least you’ll know what that big warehouse next door is all about.

Some content sourced from the CNN Business article, “Inside Italy’s secret ‘Cheese Bank’…”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Foods are Something Else!

Let’s talk about hamburgers. Depending on your druthers a carefully-proportioned build of the bread, meat, vegetables and condiments makes for an American classic that – despite trendy variations – hasn’t changed in over a century. But here’s a curiosity for you: Why does every ingredient in a burger also serve an entirely different purpose in the English language? Let’s disassemble, shall we? Top to bottom, I now give you the eleven essential ingredients.

64-druthers

The bun comes first of course; the capstone to lock all other burger components into place. But a bun is also an element of a hairstyle, is it not? You have that coil of hair on top of the head or at the nape of the neck and you call it a bun. We even have the man-bun. Er, not me. The only bun I identify with is on my burger.

Below the bun we find a very small vegetable garden. For today’s purposes we include onions, tomatoes, lettuce and pickles. But did you know, if you know all there is to know about a topic, you “know your onions“? Did you also know a tomato is old-world slang for a woman or a girl? Lettuce is today’s language for cash – dollar bills if you will. And a pickle, well that’s one of those predicaments where you say, “how did I get into this?”

Here’s a favorite ingredient. I like bacon on my burger. But not only are we all trying to bring home the bacon (i.e. make a living), but we’re also occasionally trying to save someone’s bacon (i.e. they desperately need our help).

Time for condiments. In no particular order, squeeze on a little mustard, relish and ketchup. Now, if I approve of your hamburger I tell you it “cuts the mustard“. And when you sit down to enjoy your burger I assume you relish the taste.

(Confession timeout: ketchup exists for the one and only purpose of serving as king of the condiments. Call it ketchup or catsup; all I know is the Chinese claim its invention. So opportunity knocks; let’s get ketchup out of the bottle and into an alternative use in the English language!)

Now add a slice of cheese. Think about that ingredient for a moment. Where else do you use cheese outside of the food world? Why, in front of the camera of course! And when you “say cheese” let’s also agree it has nothing to do with the food, but rather the way the word forces your mouth into the requisite smile for the photographer.

We’re almost there. The beef (patty) that is the essential ingredient of the hamburger is so much more than ground round. It’s a reference to muscle or brawn (but not to be confused with “beefcake” as this blog is rated “G”). Having a beef is about a complaint or an argument. Building something in size or amount means beefing it up.

Let’s not forget about the bottom bun. If we combine it with the top bun we have the plural, and that of course refers to a certain part of the human anatomy. Pursue your “buns of steel” if you must; I will settle for my buns on burgers.

That’s all for today’s enlightenment on the vocabulary of the hamburger. For extra credit check out the spice rack (“salt”, “pepper”, and so many more) or the bakery case (“cookies”, “rolls”), Foods are chomping to be more than just something to eat!

copious

Ricky Gervais, the English comedian, once said, “the only reason I work out is to live longer so I can eat more cheese and drink more wine.” Maybe he was thinking about me when he came up with that one. I like a glass of wine, but my love of cheese borders on the unhealthy. Every time I pose for the camera and “say cheese!”, I’m salivating instead of smiling. I must be part mouse.

Cheese came into my life at an early age; probably true for most of us. A kid’s meal was a single slice of Kraft cheese sandwiched between two pieces of Wonder bread, mayonnaise or Miracle Whip for the glue. The cheese was technically “pasteurized processed cheese product” – infused with enough preservatives to sit in the frig for a decade and still taste the same. Like margarine. Or Twinkies.

By middle school I was making my own cheese sandwiches, with real cheddar cut straight from the brick. You could make the slices as thick as you wanted, and it was a great excuse to wield one of Mom’s biggest kitchen knives. One time though, the knife slipped from the cheese to the knuckle of my ring finger and the result was a small scar I still carry to this day. It’s like my little badge of courage, only for cheese.

When I discovered the wonders of grilled cheese, there was no turning back. We had this little cast-iron sandwich maker (the precursor to the panini press, I suppose) that would imprint a clam shell on the bread as it grilled the sandwich. Like I cared about an imprint, but it was a convenient excuse to crank out dozens of grilled cheese sandwiches.

Eventually I was adding Monterey Jack to my omelets, a spicy Mexican blend to my quesadillas, and handfuls of Mozzarella to my homemade pizzas. I was consuming copious amounts of queso. Cheese became its own level on my personal food pyramid.

Several years ago, in a particularly cruel twist of fate, I developed what I think was an allergy to cheese. Every time I ate a little Swiss or Ricotta my lips would puff up to the point where they didn’t look like lips anymore. Picture a blowfish minus the gills. No amount of antihistamines would bring me back to normal. It was like God waving a big white flag and saying “Dave, the (cheese) party is OVER!” Mercifully, the allergy went away and my cheese consumption returned to its previously unhealthy levels.

Trivia time-out: If you sample every variety of cheese ever made – one a day – it would take you more than five years to get through them all. Dang. My lips would explode.

My taste for cheese has become more refined in recent years. I actually sort through and sample all those little blocks you find at your supermarket deli. I’ll pair my cheeses with a nice wine for an overly elegant appetizer.

On a recent trip to Estonia, my wife and I visited a small dairy farm that specializes in cheese and yogurt production (our tour guide was appropriately nicknamed “cheese angel”). We bought an entire wheel of Gouda, just because I thought it was cool to have a “wheel” of anything. Shreds and slices, blocks and bricks; now entire wheels of cheese.

The U.S. is the world’s leader in cheese production, at more than 5,700,000 tons per year. You could pave a very long, very wide, yellow-bricked road to Oz with all that Provolone. I’d call us the “big cheese” of the world’s producers, wouldn’t you? Speaking of the U.S., Vermont has what may be the country’s only “cheese trail”. 40 dairy farms and cheese factories are networked on a back-country circuit of highways that covers most of the state. Many farms operate on an honor system, with free samples and help-yourself purchases. I need to go to Vermont. Tomorrow.

If I’m looking for an excuse to continue my copious consumption, they say cheddar, Mozzarella, and some varieties of Swiss and American help prevent tooth decay. But they also say without your gall bladder you’ll have a hard time digesting fats (like cheese). So I need to take care of that little guy. And there’s my reason to work out.