Cheese Factory

Cheeeeese... I love cheeese.
Here we went to a cheese factory in verona and it was amazing. We tried four different types of cheese. A young one, middle aged one, a old one and an older one. I learned that depending on the color and texture, one can tell how old the cheese is. If it is a yellow color than its more that a few months old. White color is young and if the texture of the cheese is hard then that is very old. When we went into the stock area I noticed that some of the older ones had mold on it, which was totally average because they clean it any way. They have this machine that rotates the cheese as the scrap the mold off.
The most intersting thing amazed me was the way how they made the cheese process. It first starts with raw milk and is put in a huge pot and is stirred till a 1/4 of it turns to solid cheese. then its cut into pieces ( while its still in the pot) and placed into containers. The cheese maker told us that with the left over milk they feed it to their pigs ( which they make sausages out of)!

Grappa

Grappa is a fragrant grape -based pomace brandy.Usually used to digest heavy meals. When my class and I went to padua, I stoped into a wine store and bought some Grappa for a gift. The last time I tasted it, the taste was very strong I was told that it is made out of the left over of grape stalk, the veins, leaves and other left over. The color varies with grappa depends on what they add with it, some are clear, light brown or dark.
What I also found intersting in the store was all these different kinds of wine's, there was one that had baby strawberries, and there was another one that had a whole pear in it. I mostly found this one to be most intersting because I couldn't figure out how they put the whole pear in the bottle with the very small opening.

Formaggio

This cheese is called Fontina Val d'Aosta which is the oldest cheese in Italy. The texture of this cheese is dense but smooth with a little of stretch to it. When I first tried it, the cheese had a nutty taste to it but a little sweetness too, like sugar or honey. But when I ate it in a pinini which melted it the taste was more of a acid taste. It is said that this cheese is used to make fondu.

This cheese is Parmigiano Reggiano cheese

This is another hard cheese that is usually gratted and put on top of, pizza, soups, pasta dishes, veal chicken or salads. This cheese is usually sold in large chunks or already grated

Vino e Cafe

Vino:

One of my favorite cooking wines would be Garganega best known as Soave. This is a crispy and dry wine with a hint of lemon and almond taste. This wine comes from the northeast italy around Verona.

The reason why I say this is one of my favorite is because of the simplicity and elegant taste it bringd to the food. Cooking pasta and veal with a splash of this wonderful wine created the mouth watering taste to the food. A pleasent but settle taste.

One of my favorite drinking wines would have to be Moscato. Simply because Im more of a sweet wine drinker. This wine has a little sparkling in it whuch reminds me of champagne but not quite.

Cafe:

Cafe... What is much to tell. Cafe to my in Italy versus an America is very different by the taste and serving size. Im not much of a cafe drinker but I can definitly tell that the cafe here in Italy is ten times better then back in America. Considering the difference between Dunkin Dounts and teh cafe's here. The serving sizes is different too! They serve less then American do, but the funny thing is that half filled cup of cafe that they serve in Italy is more then enough for me. I aslo notice that in Italy they don't have different flavors of cafe, like the vinilla or hazelnut. Their cafe is just cafe with a great deal of purity.

Italian tomatoe

As a class trip we cooked with a professional Italian cheif who showed us how to cook his specilty recipe with a tomatoe to represent the colors of the Italian flag.
The first thing we did was to boil the tomatoe no more then 10 min in order to peal the tomatoe skin right off. Which is very easy to do so. With the peal tomatoe we were going to stuff it with vegetables. We chopped up cucumbers, red peppers, green pepper, egg plant, carrots and onions and sauteeded them in Suovo wine and olive oil and salt. With the tomatoes we later carved the inside of the tomatoe and disposed of it, so that we could stuff it. After that was done we took our pealed tomatoes and stuffed them with the vegetables. We used a bag to stuff the tomatoes so that it would make less of a mess. We flipped the tomatoe up side down so that the open stuffed side was facing the plate to prevent the stuffing to fall out. Then we cut a little section of the tomatoe open, like the shape of a triangle to peek open inside the tomatoe. Then we used that that openning to place a basel leave and dripped olive oil and salt on top of the tomatoe.
The cheif told me that this represented the colors of the Italian flag. The tomatoe was the red part, the basel leave was the green part and the vegetables represented the white part of the flag.
This priemer course was the most delicious tomatoe I have ever tasted! It was Really GREAT!

Pasta and bread!!

Pasta in Italy is an example like how the bread is to Americans.

In America we tend to have the bread, for example,

as one of our side dished that go with any meal. The

pasta is able to combine with any spice and ingredient

without overcoming the natural taste of the spice.

In Italy they use the pasta more often because it is

so easy to work with, there are all different types of pasta

that can be cheesy, spicey, saucey or even dry.

The different shapes of the noodles are significantly

for the purpose of the pasta sause.

A very clever way in order to eat pasta to consume

flavor in every bite!

Bread has been around for ancients and till this

day many meals need bread to complete it.

In America they sometimes give it as appetizers

and in Italy they usually give it with the meal.

Pasta and bread is a must, Penini must have bread,

and much more is bread related. As like the pasta noodles,

bread is also a food that can be combined with

anything and not overcome the natural taste.

Bread and pasta noodles are like blank

templetes waiting to illuminate the colors of a painting.