Reggio Emilia, a city of taste for a thousand years

In the history of Reggio Emilia it is mentioned almost exclusively for the famous episode of Canossa , when in January of 1077 the emperor Henry IV humbled himself at the castle of the Grand Duchess Matilda to obtain the annulment of the excommunication by Pope Gregory VII; or as the birthplace of the Tricolor, when 720 years later the representatives of the four cities of Reggio Emilia, Modena, Bologna and Ferrara, gathered in Congress, proclaimed the white-red-green tricolor as the banner of the Cispadana Republic, the new state born under the protection of French arms.

Raw, Cooked and Fermented are the three vertices of this triangle which correspond to Food, Cuisine and Gastronomy and represent the development of the path of a society from the unconscious to a increasingly rational attitude. Considering that the three “monument” products of these areas are Prosciutto , Parmigiano Reggiano and Lambrusco , three exemplary masterpieces of fermentation, we begin to understand on what basis the Emilian gastronomic tradition rests. origins date back thousands of years BC, when ne In the Near East agriculture and livestock were born, passing through the protohistoric cultivations of the terramaricolous civilizations to reach the first settlements of Liguri and Galli Boi; then the great Roman colonization that brought with it the deep-rooted Mediterranean culture of wheat and oil which later merged with that of butter and meat, in particular the pig with all its fats, brought by the invasions of Nordic populations they became settled for a long time, like the Goths and the Lombards; and again, the comparison and contamination with oriental food cultures since these were the borders of the Byzantine Empire and which we recognize in the consumption of spices such as nutmeg, lamb and the famous barzigole (sheep steaks).

It is in those centuries unjustly considered dark for a long time, those of the Middle Ages, that there is a further great development of the peasant civilization, Emilian and beyond, thanks to the very precious and widespread diffusion of Benedictine abbeys that the motto of “ora et labora” (pray and work) will give extraordinary impetus to agriculture and pasture crops destined to increase dairy cattle breeding. It is therefore no coincidence that a document dating back to 1159 was found in one of these monasteries in the locality of Formolara (today Frombolara), in the grancia di Marola / Bibbiano. ) in which the word formadio is mentioned for the first time to indicate a dairy product of bovine origin (the term “caseus” indicated those of sheep origin): the birth certificate of the Parmigiano Reggiano . Also in that period and in these regions a genius who remained unknown had another formidable intuition: the Romans had brought with them the habit of the laganae (hence today’s term lasagna) which were made with a mixture of wheat flour and water, but which did not bind well here because only soft wheat grows abundantly in these parts, the hard one needs warmer southern climates (the difference is well known observing the granules of the two flours under a microscope: the first have a very fine consistency, the second appear as micro-crystals), and one was forced to form very hard doughs that were also crushed with the feet to prevent them from falling apart when cooked in water. The genius consisted in the idea of ​​using the egg as a binder in the dough and it is thanks to this that today we have the legendary tagliatelle and countless stuffed pasta.

Parmigiano Reggiano what a passion, behind every wheel a story

by Federica Testa, Beatrice Bretti and Beatrice Tonno (high school Giolitti- Gandino, Bra) 23 September 2021

Emilia is fully entitled to this story thanks to the studies of Reggian biologist Lazzaro Spallanzani who, first, in 1760 noticed how the extracts boiled and in closed containers did not alter, therefore, after the Parisian cook Nicolas Appert

in 1809 had published “L’art de conserver les substances alimentaires of animal origin et végétale pour pleusieurs années”, with the beginning of the most important national canning industry in Parma. A skein of history and stories, therefore, which can well satisfy the interest of an entire guide willing to tell them, especially if also enriched by topics of a different cultural nature and by many human testimonies of affection towards a rich, generous and welcoming land .