EMILIA-ROMAGNA


Designation of Origin) or PGI (Protected Geographical Indication) products: there’s parmigiano reggiano, of course, but also prosciutto di parma and prosciutto di modena; the even more highly prized culatello, from the muscular haunches of the pig; balsamic vinegar; anguria reggiana watermelons; vignola cherries, and dozens more.


Saddle up I begin in Parma, the ultimate gourmand- cyclist base camp. Hosteria Bertinelli and its cheeses are a short ride west, across the sprawling Taro, a tributary of the Po; northwest lies the commune of Polesine Zibello, whose persistent winter fogs infuse its culatello with a uniquely sweet flavour. But I don’t want to neglect the city itself. I fortify myself with an aperitivo at Enoteca


Fontana — a salmon-hued cantina on the thoroughfare of Strada Luigi Carlo Farini from which ebullient young Parmigiani spill, laden with €5 (£4.30) prosciutto crudo and glasses of fruity white Malvasia secca. Across the street is La Prosciutteria, an


Italian deli straight out of a Richard Curtis movie. The trick is to avoid tormenting yourself among its flawlessly presented wines, pastas and salumi (culatello di zibello is €130/£113 per kilogram, I note), and instead nip around the side to sister restaurant Degusteria. It’s intimate — just 30-odd covers, with a coppery-red interior and boxed-glass frontage consumed by climbing plants. With chef Francesco Bonofiglio looking on,


an expectant smile framed by his pencil-thin moustache, I’m initiated into the world of anolini in brodo: smooth, taut discs of pasta, filled with slow-cooked veal and spices and served in a richly aromatic broth with a dusting of 24-month parmigiano reggiano. Nothing about this dish, thought by many


Clockwise from top: A pair of cyclists rides between Parma and Reggio Emilia; a grand villa near Correggio; Ciacco Gelato in Piazza della Steccata, Parma


to originate from Parma, is convenient — the veal took eight hours to cook, the broth four, Francesco informs me. The memory of the richness of the flavour, the warmth in the pit of the stomach, the sheer damn perfection of it stays with me for days. Striking out east the following morning,


the prosaic suburbs of Parma quickly fall away, replaced by expansive fields, shuttered casale farmhouses shaded by rows of poplars


and grand villas with pleached lime trees of buttery autumnal yellow. Near the village of Basilicagoiano, I spot a farmer steadily ploughing a rectangular swathe into a boulder field the colour of dark chocolate. White, heron-like little egrets fan out behind him, like an animated bridal train, picking at the soil. The farmer waves. I wave. He stops, kills


the engine and we chat for a while, the buzz of a biplane in the hazy autumnal sky and a persistent cuckoo the only other sounds. This is 20-year-old Francesco Mattiloi. He’s prepping the field for alfalfa, he says, which is the purple-flowering, highly nutritious cornerstone of the diet on which cows supplying milk to parmigiano reggiano producers must be fed. His family have 400 cows of their own, on a nearby farm started by his father’s grandfather in 1902. Francesco is wearing a red T-shirt, board


shorts and a broad, guileless smile. His air- conditioned, 200-horsepower tractor may have put a bit of a gap between his work and the backbreaking toil of his great-grandfather, but Francesco’s connection to the land seems no less ardent. He insists on showing me the cows, swinging the tractor around and bouncing off down the leaf-strewn lane as I cycle behind. We find his mother drying handfuls of


porcini mushrooms on a gigantic whiteboard that’s been laid out in the sun. The herd of black-and-white cows, which Francesco proudly shows off like a fleet of Ferraris, is chewing mouthfuls of hay to the rear. A short distance from the Mattiloi family


farm is the border between Parma and Reggio Emilia — defined by the venous waters of the Enza river. Viewed on a map, the nine provinces of Emilia-Romagna resemble plump ciabattas squeezed together in a nonna’s shopping basket. And it’s handy to think of them this way: equally appetising but entirely discrete entities, in which dishes and delicacies freely available in one province can mysteriously vanish from counters just a few hundred yards away. Crossing into Reggio Emilia, erbazzone


becomes ubiquitous. It’s a slender pastry hailing from these parts that’s stuffed with spinach or boiled beet tops, shallots and onion. Torta di riso is particularly prized here,


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