It’s like a culinary riddle: what is a food made of only three ingredients where the main processing is done by invisible workers; which can be eaten as an appetizer, condiment or dessert; and which is prescribed by doctors to cure ailments?

Need a hint? It’s also a dairy product… that can be eaten by the lactose-intolerant.

Much more than a fancy way to say “parmesan”, Parmigiano-Reggiano is a cheese that can only be made with extremely precise ingredients, in an extraordinarily particular process, in a 10,000-sq-km geographical area of Italy so carefully defined that you can make Parmigiano on one side of the small city of Bologna but not the other.

The result of all that labour and legality is – as many cooks, nutritionists and Italians alike will tell you – a practically perfect food.

It is a panacea – something that gives health to everything it touches

There is Parmigiano’s taste: salty but sweet, grassy but nutty, sharp but rich. There’s its texture: hard but grainy, popping with white crystals. There’s its evolution as it ages: a two-year-old cheese smells like fresh fruit and tastes sharply sweet; a three-year-old wheel reminds you of dried grapes and nutmeg, tastes more savoury and complex, and crumbles more easily in the palm... [ read more ]