Parmesan perfection

"Most American 'Parmesan,'" says Steven Jenkins, the world famous cheese monger from Columbia, Mo., "tastes like sawdust." Frankly, I think he's giving sawdust a bad rap. Even wood particles must taste better than the stuff you get in that little green can.

True Parmesan cheese, Parmigiano-Reggiano, is the world's greatest cheese, says Jenkins. It is nothing at all like what passes for Parmesan cheese on many grocery shelves in this country. The head of a family of hard grating cheeses named "grana" for their grainy or granular texture, it surely must be one that food chemist Harold McGee had in mind when he identified cheese as one of the great achievements of humankind. It's considered so valuable in Italy that it's sometimes used as a down payment on a house. No wonder Moliere asked for it on his deathbed.

Parmesan cheese likely originated in Parma, the capital of Italy's famous food valley along the Po River in north-central Italy, sometime in the 11th century. The way it's made has not changed much since then, as I discovered when I recently visited a little "mamma e papá" operation on a country road just outside Parma, one of almost a thousand in the region. As the head cheese maker showed me, all you need to make an average-size wheel, which weighs around 66 pounds, is about 130 gallons of milk and a couple of years.

But not just any milk. It must be milk from cattle raised in the precisely demarcated DOC ("Denominazione di Origine Controllata") region legally designated by the Ministry of Agriculture for production of Parmigiano-Reggiano. Regulations governing the production of milk used to make this cheese are as stringent as those of any French wine appellation.

The milk is too valuable for drinking. Every drop of it goes into the cheese. For drinking purposes the Parmigiani import milk from somewhere else. Moreover, the cattle must be fed on fresh grass. To make sure that that is the case, by law Parmigiano-Reggiano can only be made between April 15 and Nov. 11.

Two separate milkings are required for every batch of cheese. First there is the evening milk, which rests overnight. Then there is the following morning's milk, which is allowed to rest for about an hour. The two are combined in large copper cauldrons to begin the cheese-making procedure, which culminates with the cheese being put in wooden molds to age for at least 14 months but typically for about two years. (The pigs of Parma, by the way, get to drink the whey that is drained from the curds in the process, which just might explain the singular flavor of "prosciutto di Parma," or Parma ham, another great delicacy of the region.)

But it's not just the milk that makes Parmigiano-Reggiano so special. Italians believe even the air of the region in which it's made is a vital ingredient. As British food writer Delia Smith observes, the area is situated between the mountains and the Mediterranean, which means it is bathed in both mountain air and sea breezes, a combination essential to the proper ageing of Parmesan cheese.

There's another secret ingredient in the production of this classic cheese that was obvious to me as my guide assiduously demonstrated each step of the cheese-making process -- pride of craftsmanship. As I walked through the cascina where towering stacks of Parmesan are left to age, it was clear that the Parmigiani take tradition seriously. That's probably the major reason you're not going to find anything remotely like real Parmigiano-Reggiano in a little green tin.

Listen to "A Harte Appetite" at 8:49 a.m. Fridays on KRCU, 90.9 FM. Write to Tom Harte, Southeast Missourian, P.O. Box 699, Cape Girardeau, Mo., 63702-0699, or e-mail tharte@semissourian.com.