Tag Archives: cheese

Puglia Food Products: Olive Oil, Capocollo, Wine, Cheese and Seafood

food, , , , , , , , ,

Grindstone for a 17th century olive oil mill, a thousand-year old olive tree

Though some time was alloted in Puglia for activities not requiring mastication, the bulk of the trip was spent at food production sites, restaurants and agricultural lands. I realize that this must sound like the best foodie vacation ever, but eating rich foods nonstop for a week is not as pleasant as it may seem. Some of us had the added stress of documenting the trip in detail because there is a paper and presentation required after the stage. By the end, we were all thoroughly sick of cured meats, cheeses and each other. A few people actually became ill, though I cannot say whether this was due to food poisoning, general infection, or the stress of traveling and eating from 9 am to 1 am every day. My advice for anyone who goes on these trips is to ingest plenty of fiber and choose your roommate carefully.

Moving on to the actual food. Puglia’s dry, sunny climate makes it difficult to grow many crops, but the hardiness of olive trees in times of drought has resulted in their widespread cultivation. The trees dot the Puglian landscape with their graceful, twisted trunks and branches, akin to a pair of ballet dancers. We were told by one farmer that the trees twist according to the Earth’s rotation, and that olive trees planted south of the equator would twist in the opposite direction, similar to the rotation of water draining from toilets. This is a romantic idea, but since the Coriolis force has been shown to have a tenuous effect on toilet water, I am somewhat doubtful of the tree-twisting claim.

Still, the trees are majestic to behold, knotted and gnarly, reminiscent of the baobab tree in The Little Prince. The one pictured above actually belongs to a Russian who admired the unique shape of its trunk. So, he bought the tree for €5,000. In return, he gets to keep the olive oil milled from the olives of this tree, which comes to 10-15 liters of oil per year. He also comes to visit his tree annually. If you are interested in owning a piece of Italian real estate and having a lifetime supply of olive oil, you too can invest in one of the 50,000 available trees for the low price of €500-1,000 by contacting Olio Cazzetta.
Continue reading Puglia Food Products: Olive Oil, Capocollo, Wine, Cheese and Seafood →

Gastronomy School is Serious Business

academics, , , , , , , ,

The view out the window from Aula 2, where we spend 6 hours a day in class

Classes at UNISG are held from 9 am to 4 pm, with an hour long lunch break at noon. Without too much self-incrimination, I will simply say that it has been a long time since I have had to focus so intensely, without the distraction of of the internets, on one subject for that length of time. This will require some adjustment.

There is no semester or quarter system in place, but rather, professors give lectures for a few days at a time whenever they are available (some are visiting from other universities) or periodically throughout the year. For the first couple days, we were lectured on traditional specialties from the various regions of Italy. The former yielded immediate payoffs as I went to the grocery store and began to analyse and recognise the breads and cheeses available here in the Piedmont region. Since we are in northwestern Italy in a cold, mountainous climate, the cuisine is characterized by robust dishes, the use of butter instead of olive oil (French influence), lots of antipasti, cheese and meat, and few pasta dishes. On Friday morning, one of my classmates brought in a couple local cheeses that we had discussed the day before, including a Bruss. This is a traditional Piedmontese cheese made by reusing the leftovers of different cheese that did not age well due to excess humidity or fermentation. You mix the cheeses into grappa (or wine or vinegar), and let it ferment, then beat it into a spread. Suffice it to say, I have had many very strong cheeses in my life, but this was the most intense, pungent cheese I have ever had, tart with the tang of fermentation. The hair on the back of my neck was raised, and you could see the noses wrinkle amongst my classmates. If I hadn’t known better, I wouldn’t have recognized the brus as cheese. American cheddar this was not. Unsurprisingly, Valeria (the native Italian) thought the brus was great.

We also had a lecture on the molecular analysis of taste, which is a throwback to high school chemistry class. Though people tend to simplify the perception of taste with a few adjectives (salty, sweet, earthy), there are chemical underpinnings for the way we taste foods differently, why sugar tastes differently than saccharine or aspartame. And there is still plenty of work to be done. For instance, we still haven’t pinned down the way miraculin (the protein in flavor-tripping miracle berries) works at a molecular level.
Continue reading Gastronomy School is Serious Business →