I made a lot of mistakes while learning to cook in Italy with Chef Stefano. In my short time there, I expressed a dislike of negronis, wore shorts in public, and called their national sport, “soccer.” Yikes! Or more aptly, mama mia!
The biggest mistake I made was to refer to their cherished Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese as Parmesan. I did them dirty, too, pronouncing it like, “Parmez-yawn,” and thinking I just correctly referred to the thing they hold as dearly as their beloved teeny, tiny Fiats.
Italians call it Parmigiano and pronounce it, “Parm-i-John-o.” And evidently, they don’t take it so well when you ruin one of the things they love best. It would be like someone coming to the United States and pronouncing a McNugget, “mini chicken boob.”
I’d ask a question about what we were cooking and how and when we should add Parmezyawn and both Stefano and his son would bristle. Every time.
There’s a scene in Monty Python’s The Holy Grail, where a bizarre group of knights pound the heroes of the story into submission by yelling “Ni!” at them over and over again. That’s how my Italian hosts felt every time I parmezyawn-ed them.
Finally, Stefano threw down his kitchen towel and mocked my pronounciation. “No Paul, we are not using parmezzzzzyyyyawn. We use ‘Parmi-John-o’ and thats how you say it here.”
“It’s not Parmez-yawn?” I asked, poking the bear and putting the rest of my stay in jeopardy.
“No,” he snorted immediately back. “Parmez-yawn is what you all created in New Jersey when you couldn’t get access to real cheese. You won’t find any of that here.”
And that’s how I learned the difference. Stefano’s disdain made me think of that stuff that comes in large green cannisters and can seemingly stay on your shelf for a decade without going bad. I was embarassed.
Parmiggiano-Reggiano has a “protected designation of origin” under Italian law and has to be prepared a certain way in order to use that name. And this is where it gets really good.
The name is protected by the Consorzio del Formaggio Parmigiano Reggiano (aka the cheese police). The cheese police have a host of regulations that are required for a cheese to use that name. Mostly, the cheese has to be made from cow’s milk and aged for at least 12 months. But there are a host of other rules, including where the cheese is produced, what the cows are fed and how it is stored in rinds.
After 12 months, the cheese police show up at the facility to test the quality of the product. They do this by tapping on the outside of the rind with a weirdly shaped hammer to listen for deformities. So, a pretty big difference between the sophistication of the job title and the actual duties. If you found out that someone on your dating app inspected Parmigiano-Reggiano for a living, you might coo with anticipation. But if that same person told you that they listened to the sound that a wheel of cheese makes when you whap it with a hammer, you’d just swipe right on by. Or left, as the case may be.
After hammer-time with the cheese police, the best sounding wheels of cheese are branded with official Parmigiano-Reggiano label. The second-best sounding cheeses are given the same label, only with lines drawn through it. This says, “This cheese is good, but not fucking good.” And a third group gets no brand at all, meaning it ends up being called “Parmezyawn,” or even worse, “EZ cheese.”
The good stuff is fucking good. At 12 months, it’s soft and a little agressive, like your friend’s know-it-all-kid who can’t wait to tell you all about fruit bats or the moon or whatever-they’re-into. At 24 months, the cheese smooths out and delivers a textured, nutty, virtuoso performance. It is your friend’s kid, when they are 18. They know who they are and add something unique and usually postive to the conversation. This is the cheese you should look for. 36 month old stuff is almost crunchy and starts down a path towards nutmeg and a fully funded 401k. It is your friend’s kid when they get married, they are genuinely happy to see you and bursting with loveliness. You can age a cheese longer, but I’m afraid if I keep going, the cheese police will come after me.
The United States has some rules, too. The code of federal regulations says that it must be made from milk and “readily grated.”
So a bit different.
That’s why when you go to a store, you can find a wedge of parmigiano for $20 a pound and a tub of grated parmesan for $2. I’m not saying that you should never buy parmesan. Maybe you care more about the carbon consumed by flying cheese to your grocery store. Maybe the difference is immaterial, considering the difference in price. Or maybe you’re like me, that you just didn’t really know the difference.
Now you do.
To me, parmigiano’s biggest draw is knowing that you are going to get something special. A snowy dusting of 24-month parmigiano on a pasta dish is like seeing Jeremy Allen White or Brie Larson in a tank top. Ayooogah! (See if I were really good there, I would have also come up with a male name that is related to cheese. But I couldn’t. The closest I could come up with is Meatloaf. But I don’t think you’d say, “Ayooogah!” if you saw him in a tank top. I don’t know if he is even still alive.)
Anyways: grated parm. Actually, that doesn’t work either. I made eggplant parmigiano with Stefano and when I said, “Parm,” he snapped his head at me and waited for me to finish the word. It went:
How long are we going to cook the eggplant parm
[awkward silence]
ezyawn err parmi-John-o. I mean, how long are we going to cook the eggplants?
[Nervously drank from chianti.]
With Parmesan, you never know how it’s going to taste. Most of it is fine. We went to the Valkyries game the other night and Amy got a salad. A couple bites in, she made a face, like she had just seen Meatloaf in a tank top. (He died. I checked.) Having been married for over 25 years, she unsurprisingly said, “This tastes awful. Try it.”
I did, and it was the parmesan in the salad that sucked. It tasted like mildewy hay and desperation. If you find yourself hating some parmesan, congratulate yourself for saving money on skipping the real stuff, throw it out and start over.
Then treat yourself, and get the good stuff. It will feel like this:
Ayoogah!
Does this give me permission to give the waiter a stink eye when he says “Freshly grated parmesan?” I hope so. I am always jealous of their cranking grating machines.