My Grandpa Theo was a vaudevillian and band leader. In the early days, he played violin while the diminutive Lancashire comedienne Hilda Baker clog-danced. Hilda went on to a television career built around such catchphrases as "Has he been?", "She knows, you know", and "I must get a little hand put on this watch". Those were the days. She chose This Is Your Life to reveal that Theo had been her lover for 30 years. Granny was not best pleased.
Hilda has passed away to the theatre at the end of life's pier, but I meet her dead spit running a trattoria in Parma, Italy. Though predominantly Catholic, Italians reserve much of their religious fervour for matters of the table, and it was in the hushed tones of the confessional that the name "Sorelle Picchi" was vouchsafed to me.
From outside, the shop is like many others in Parma - a small salumeria hung high with hams and stacked with wheels of golden cheese. Squeeze past the till and the tiny open kitchen, however, and Sorelle Picchi opens into a classic, honest 1960s trattoria. Faded watercolours hang on the pannelled walls. Roués and their mistresses, painters and decorators, and grandmas with granddaughters sit at pink-draped tables. And there, with her cheeky necklace and saucy smile, is our Hilda.
She introduces herself as Giuliana and asks if I've ever had the pleasure of her. Soon, she's perched on my lap, playfully pummelling my thigh and ordering tortelli for me. Parma's most famous pasta, these tortelli are soft cushions of pasta stuffed variously with pumpkin, potato and ricotta cheese. The dish is dressed with melted butter, feathered with slices of woodsy porcini mushrooms and dusted with grated cheese. "Ah, parmigiano reggiano!" I approve. Giuliana wags a chubby finger. "Never!" she cries. "Reggiano is troppo buono for pasta."
The pasta is troppo buono for words. A plate of nuggets of parmesan is brought. "This is reggiano," she asserts, adding that grating such artisanal cheese over everyday pasta is like deep-frying in single estate extra virgin olive oil. Two years old, deeply savoury but with a sweet nuttiness, this reggiano is long and deliciously complex on the tongue.
At damp dawn the next morning, I drive to meet master cheese-maker Guiliano Baroni. The River Enza marks the misty division between Romagna and Emilia, from where the road climbs the southern edge of the shouldered Appenini hills. Round blind buffs, shut-in valleys come to green life in a landscape endlessly rippled and worked, with every available square metre under food production. On a hilltop, the village of Canossa is crowned by a church with walls the colour of parmesan and a wall-clock still working to the Julian calendar. The countryside comes right up to the door of the caseificio, which takes milk from seven local farms, and turns it into cheese every single day of the year. This unrelenting effort explains Giuliano's whey complexion - he also has a Medici's nose, the eyes of a defrocked priest and the arms of an all-in wrestler.
The morning sun streams in over the terracotta tiles of the piggery below (Parma's celebrated pigs feed mostly on whey) as the curd is skillfully fished out with muslin nets. The slithery white mass is then set in 50kg moulds, before spending three weeks in a salt bath, then sent to a staggionatura warehouse for maturing. Save that the vats are now steam-jacketed, this method is unchanged in a thousand years.
Down the hill is Traversetolo, a working town wispy with woodsmoke. The door of a blank-faced staggionatura opens to reveal 65,000 wheels of parmigiano reggiano, stacked ceiling high - averaging €700 per cheese, that's a lot of wedge(s). Most staggionaturi are owned by banks, who take your cheeses as collateral, loan you cash against them, then charge interest in the form of maturing fees. The warehouse smells strong, fresh and ripe and, using trowel-shaped knives with a conjurer's skill, Giuliano splits open a wheel, to reveal the fruity-fragrant jaggedy cheese.
I'm introduced to the man from the Consorzio, without whose say-so no cheese can be called parmigiano reggiano. He awards Guiliano's cheeses XTRA, his highest grade, and brands this on the rind before asking: "How is your Queen?". It's a rickydoodolus question. "Hilda? - she's alive and well and living in Parma ..."
· Sorelle Picchi, Via Farini 27, 4311 Parma, 0039 0521 233 528, lunchtime only. Giuliano Baroni's 24-month parmigiano reggiano is sold exclusively in the UK by Marks & Spencer.
