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. The answer: Parmigiano-Reggiano.
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.
