THE BEST FOOD IN THE WORLD

I’m sitting in bed as I type with a mug of lemon tea as I seem to have caught a cold or some sort of bacteria this past week. It’s easy to understand why I have all these germs after spending a full 7 days with my classmates, either on a bus, intimately snuggled in a quasi-2 star hotel, feasting at numerous dinner tables, drinking vino, being out in the cold, taking photographs, butchering pigs, eating different cuts of pigs, cheese, laughing, and more travel. That doesn’t sound that great neither does it begin to describe the whirlwind visit our class made to the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy.

Lunch on day 4: Cured Meats

If I were to use one word to describe the trip it would be, it would be passion. The food producers we met in the course of the week had passion written on their faces and you could see it as they spoke about their jobs, none the less when we tasted the fruit of their labour. No wonder the common statement “This is the best-insert product- in the whole world” was applied to all their products. I don’t blame them, they have reason to be proud of what they do and anyway there is a blury line between fact and opinion when it comes to food products. My personal favourites this week were the Award winning Marcello Lambrusco, which I had at Ristorante Cocchi  in Parma, as well as the home made balsamic infused strawberry jam I had at Agriturismo Bosco del Fracasso.

It was a fascinating trip: learning about of the food we love, their stories and the traditions involved in the production and the consuming, meeting the producers and having a glimpse of their lived experiences. A joy for the anthropologist in me. The only problem was my lack of Italian to express myself. I’m slowly trying to solve that problem. But for now I must rest as I am tired from a week of eating “The best food in the world”. More to follow this week about feasting in Emilia-Romagna. 

Some of the terrain in Emilia-Romagna 

Kuvhima

Kuvhima, if I have spelled that correctly, translates to "hunting" in the Shona language. The assumption is that when you go kuvhima you return with meat of some sort: rabbits, pheasants, game not fungus. Well I’m in the Piedmont region so the idea of returning home with fungus is more than acceptable, if not praised.

Properly dressed in boots of all sorts we went hunting for the sought after fungus that grows in the depth of the earth known as a truffle. Although it felt like a game of nascondino/ verstoppertje-(my attempt to say "hide and seek" in Italian and Dutch)  Tartufo nero  and  Tartufo Bianco di Alba were found. It was a fascinating experience watching our hunting dogs Kira and Zorro sniff their way through the woods as us humans trudged behind them in search of the hidden treasures. Frantic digging of the earth signalled to us that treasure had been found. When successfully retrieved we marvelled at our piece of expensive fungus and the dogs got a tasty treat in return.

The truffle has a certain je ne sais quoi to it. With its rich, and slightly pungent aroma, the truffle is for me an acquired taste. That being said you can do a lot with them. The truffle was guest star in some of these products that we tasted: honey, butter, cheese, salami, preserves, oil to name a few. 

It was a day well spent hunting and tasting expensive fungus. Not your ordinary hunting experience, but one that has a lot of money to it as a single truffle can cost roughly anywhere between €25 to a few thousand Euro. 

 

Early Morning Adventures

I mentioned a whirlwind of experiences. Getting lost. My school is in Pollenzo, which is about 5 kilometres away from Bra. There is a bus service that you can use to get to school. There is a country road that you can walk or cycle through to get to school. I decided to walk to school this past Thursday. We (my adventurous flatmate and me) left our apartment in Bra in good time, our aim was to get to school at 8.45 in time for our 9.00 lecture. That was out aim. We did get to school, but not at 8.45, and not refreshed from a morning walk. I’m trying not to admit this but we got lost in the middle of the farms, I don’t know where but we just found ourselves too close to the highway and not in the direction of school. We figured that we would be left to perish in the middle of nowhere if we kept going, so backwards we went, through some farmer’s muddy field (the land was laying fallow for the winter so we didn't destroy and crops). We tried to call a classmate to come to pick us up with her car- that failed since we couldn't give her proper directions. How do you direct someone into unnamed fields anyway? We eventually got back to the canter of Bra and got a taxi to school. With €12.00 less to our names, tired, muddy, possibly smelly we did get to school and luckily only about half an hour into the lecture.  I was able to get a few photos though of the scenic country side. 

I live in Italy

So here goes nothing. My first blog post. I hope not to bore you too much, but rather keep you somewhat entertained, intrigued and confused. Apparently being confused is a good thing according to Carlo Petrini. For those who don’t know Carlo, he is the founder of Slow Food. Slow who?... you ask. Slow Food promotes food to be Good, Clean and Fair or buono, pulito, e giusto in Italian. What does that have to do with me. I’m currently a Masters student in Food Culture and Communications at the University of Gastronomic Sciences (UNISG) in Italy. The aim is to approach food in a more holistic manner, and it is supported by Slow Food.

So back to Carlo, he spoke to us about his passion for Slow Food and gave us a lot to think about and suggested that being confused about food is a good thing; it means you are thinking and not just enjoying the taste. So that is what I plan to do, get a bit confused about food. What better place to do so than Italy. I constantly remind myself that this is not a dream and that it is my reality not someone else’s.

I’ve been in Bra, Italy for about two weeks now and it has been a whirlwind of experiences: eating, tedious bureaucratic processes that had to be done for me to legally reside in Italy, finding my way round Bra, wine, going to school and learning about things I had very little knowledge about, cheese, getting lost, eating, laughing, walking and trying (although not very well) to speak Italian Thankfully I’m not the only one who has had this whirlwind. I have 26 class mates from all over the world which makes my new home of Bra even more exciting.