WELCOME TO OUR KITCHEN: We're taste-testing Parmiggiano-Reggiano!
As part of our new format for this long-running podcast, we now have segments in which we taste-test and rate common foods or ingredients.
We've spent over two decades in the kitchen. We're Bruce Weinstein & Mark Scarbrough, veteran cookbook authors who've sold over 1 million (!) copies of our cookbooks. Out latest, out in November, 2023, is THE LOOK & COOK AIR FRYER BIBLE with over 700 photos, one for every step of every recipe. You can find it here.
We're not talking about that book in this podcast episode. We're taste-testing Parmigiano-Reggiano (or "Parmesan cheese," as it's sometimes misnamed.) We got many of the cheeses we're trying from this website. Check it out!
We also want to tell you about our one-minute cooking tip, as well as what's making us happy in food this week.
Here are the segments for this episode of COOKING WITH BRUCE & MARK:
[01:39] Our one-minute cooking tip: Use a salad spinner. If you'd like to find the one we recommend, click this link.
[03:53] We're taste-testing Parmigiano-Reggiano. We got ours (mostly--except for the U. S. supermarket standard--here).
[19:22] What’s making us happy in food this week? New England apples and baklava.
Transcript
Hey, I'm Bruce Weinstein and this is the Podcast Cooking with Bruce and Mark.
Mark:And I'm Mark Scarborough, and welcome to our Kitchen.
Mark:This is the fourth season of our podcast, and as you may know, we're doing all kinds of different things in this season.
Mark:We are actually cooking recipes again in the kitchen.
Mark:We have all sorts of recipes already up.
Mark:You can find these recipes, by the way, on our website, Bruce and mark.com.
Mark:There's a blog of these podcast.
Mark:Episodes, including the recipes on these podcast episodes and links to the author's books will appear in the interview sections occasionally on this podcast.
Mark:And another thing that we are doing is we are doing taste tests, and I wish you could be here in the podcast studio with us right now.
Mark:I'm not going to say what we're doing this week, but I wish you could be here because.
Mark:The podcast studio has a distinct aroma from what we're tasting, but we'll get to that in a minute.
Bruce:And I hope it doesn't attract vermin.
Mark:I hope our podcast studio is in our house, and I also hope that it doesn't attract vermin.
Mark:But, uh, I should tell you that, uh, if you listen to my podcast, Walking with Dante, you know it.
Mark:Um, what, about two weeks ago, I came into the podcast studio and there was a copperhead snake on the floor of the studio, and I just about freaked out.
Mark:That whole episode, This episode of Dante is very weird, with my being very giddy and over the top because of this stupid snake.
Mark:Anyway, um, there's no snakes here, but there is going to be a testing segment, a taste testing segment of this podcast.
Mark:We're going to give our one minute cooking tip, and we're going to tell you what's making us happy in food this week.
Mark:So let's get started.
Bruce:One minute cooking tip of the week.
Bruce:Buy yourself a salad spinner.
Mark:Okay, I want to say something.
Mark:I have had a salad spinner since I first lived on my own in my early 20s.
Mark:I have had one my entire life.
Bruce:I have seen videos on TikTok of old Italian ladies putting wet salad greens in a towel and spinning them around their kitchen.
Bruce:That's great if you want to do that.
Bruce:You mean shaking them over their heads or...
Bruce:Just spinning them so the centrifugal force drives out the wet.
Mark:You could...
Mark:wet all over your kitchens.
Mark:Disgusting.
Bruce:The best salads are made from totally dried greens, so the dressing can stick to the leaves and the dressing doesn't get diluted by any residual water on the greens.
Bruce:And we're going to have a link to our favorite spinner on the show notes below this episode wherever you get your podcasts.
Mark:Yeah.
Mark:And let me also say that a salad spinner is absolutely crucial if you grow your own herbs for like
Mark:It's going to be sandy and dirty and gritty, even if you buy the stuff at a farm stand.
Mark:And really, a salad spinner is the only way out of that problem.
Bruce:You've got to wash your greens and spin them dry.
Mark:Again, I want to tell you that it's one of the first, I had a salad spinner before I had a microwave.
Mark:So there you go.
Mark:I've had a salad spinner.
Mark:for a long time and you should have them too.
Mark:Before we get to the big taste test, our first taste test on the new cooking with Bruce and Mark, let me just say that it'd be great if you signed up for our newsletter.
Mark:We have a semi weekly newsletter.
Mark:It's sometimes connected to this podcast with recipes from it.
Mark:It's sometimes completely different from this podcast.
Mark:You can find a way to sign up for it on our website, bruceandmark.
Mark:com.
Mark:It's right on the splash page.
Mark:I do not capture emails, I do not keep them, and I don't know who you are if you've signed up.
Mark:I just see numbers.
Mark:Three people signed up this week.
Mark:Four people signed up this week.
Mark:That kind of thing.
Mark:So, I'm, uh, well, I want to keep your privacy sacrosanct, so, ooh, there's a word for you, sacrosanct.
Mark:Uh, I want to keep it that way.
Mark:We're back to Dante, right?
Mark:Sacrosanct.
Mark:Um, anyway, I want to keep it that way for you, so you can always unsubscribe at any given moment, but you can subscribe on our website, bruceandmark.
Mark:com.
Mark:Okay, up next.
Mark:A taste test segment, a first ever on the podcast, Cooking with Bruce and
Mark:Mark.
Bruce:We are doing a taste test of Parmesan and Parmigiano Reggiano cheese.
Mark:Okay, before we do a taste test, can you explain the difference between Parmesan and Parmigiano Reggiano?
Bruce:In Italy.
Bruce:The only Parmesan cheese you're going to get is Parmigiano Reggiano.
Bruce:They don't even know what Parmesan means there.
Bruce:They know what Parmigiano means.
Bruce:They do because we live in a global culture.
Bruce:It needs to be made in the region of Parma in Italy.
Bruce:And there's only a In the hundreds of cheesemakers in Italy that make Parmigiano Reggiano, it has to be made according to very specific rules.
Bruce:It must be aged a minimum of one year.
Bruce:And we're going to taste stuff that goes way beyond that today.
Bruce:And the first thing we're going to taste, the low end.
Bruce:Shelf stable parmesan cheese in the shaker.
Bruce:Everyone knows it as the green can.
Bruce:We're both putting pinches of it in our mouth.
Bruce:Um, salty mostly.
Mark:Yeah.
Mark:The first thing I get hit with is salt.
Mark:I have to say my initial reaction is cheap pizza restaurant in North America.
Bruce:This is the stuff that's in those shaker cans.
Bruce:that you put on your pizza, and now
Mark:it has a slightly sharp taste underneath all of that salt, but man, the initial hit is salt.
Bruce:Now, the ingredients say it's made of cultured part skim milk.
Bruce:Even in Parma, Italy, the Parmigiano is made with part skim milk.
Bruce:It is a lower fat cheese, but it's the next ingredient after that cellulose.
Bruce:Cellulose is plant material, and in a lot of...
Bruce:It's wood fibers.
Bruce:Well, that's it.
Bruce:There's been a lot of testing done of these canned cheeses that contain cellulose, and they find that it's wood.
Bruce:Basically, it's wood chips ground up to a powder to...
Bruce:They claim it keeps it from caking.
Bruce:I claim that it makes it more cost effective.
Mark:Yeah, there's a, there's a, I mean, God, so snotty of me.
Mark:But it's in my mouth right now.
Mark:And the only thing I can think of is cheap.
Mark:It feels and smells cheap.
Mark:My father, who passed away two years ago, could not stand Parmesan cheese.
Mark:He couldn't even be in a restaurant with it.
Mark:He thought it smelled so gross.
Mark:And he thought it smelled like...
Mark:Um, uh, this, I think my father didn't know anything that he was not a culinary professional and he didn't have a really refined palate to say the least.
Mark:He's a, you know, very, uh, lower middle class guy who made a big success in business.
Mark:so hurry for him.
Mark:But he did not have a refined pallet, which is okay.
Mark:But I think that's because this is what he knew as Parmesan cheese.
Bruce:Okay, we're going to go to another little bowl, which is the pre graded in the store.
Bruce:So it was in the cheese counter, but it was in a little plastic container.
Bruce:You peel off the top and it was pre graded, but it must be refrigerated.
Bruce:This is not shelf stable.
Mark:And do you know why that is, that it must be refrigerated?
Bruce:Because there's no preservatives added.
Bruce:There were preservatives added in that canned powdered
Mark:stuff.
Mark:I can say, that this pre grated stuff, if you don't cover it in the fridge, it gets very desiccated.
Mark:and dried out.
Bruce:It's a little more mild tasting, actually, than the canned one.
Mark:And yeah, it's lacking the barf edges.
Bruce:Yeah, it is.
Bruce:It's okay.
Bruce:Part of the difference in the shelf stable in the refrigerator is also the shelf stable one is made from pasteurized milk and all of these Italian cheeses.
Bruce:are made from unpasteurized milk.
Bruce:I
Mark:mean, listen, this, uh, pre grated stuff I'm, I'm rolling around my mouth.
Mark:It is way less salty than the can.
Mark:It is.
Mark:Um, again, it's lacking the barf edges.
Mark:It's, um, it's not as acrid, and it's, it's mellower.
Mark:It's, uh, for lack of a better word, milkier.
Mark:Mm hmm.
Mark:It has a definite dairy quality about it.
Mark:Shelf stable stuff didn't really have that much of a dairy quality about it.
Bruce:No, it just had a very
Mark:salty...
Mark:Except, unless you count like, soured milk as dairy, but...
Bruce:Okay, we're gonna up our game and leave the U.
Bruce:S.
Bruce:now, and we're gonna go to Italy and get some true Parmigiano Reggiano.
Mark:But let me say, before we move to Italy, let me just say that this pre grated stuff, you know, like you can find it at almost every grocery store, and it's the pre grated Parmesan in the cheese section.
Mark:And it's not in the can, but it's in the little container in the cheese section.
Mark:It's a perfectly fine Parmigiano Reggiano.
Mark:It's not refined in any way, but it's certainly better than the can.
Mark:I mean, you shouldn't feel bad about buying this.
Mark:I think once we, maybe not the first Italian cheese we're going to taste, but after that, everything else, it's almost a waste to bake with.
Mark:It's like, it's like pouring a, I don't know what, it's like pouring a 50 Barolo into a stew to cook with it.
Mark:It seems a waste of money.
Bruce:Okay, so the first one.
Bruce:Okay, so Parmigiano Reggiano, the first of the four, is the one year.
Bruce:This is available in almost every supermarket I go to.
Bruce:To be fair, it's expensive.
Bruce:It's about 18 a pound, which is not cheap.
Mark:Okay, what the difference is here, and I think this might be a little bit of food degrading because it's pre, that stuff, pre stuff, other stuff was pre graded.
Mark:And this is, this is remarkably sweeter.
Mark:It has a, a sweeter aftertaste, it is less sharp, it is definitely milky.
Mark:I think that the one year block, and this is the standard block you're going to find, let's say, at Whole Foods.
Mark:This has a very sweet, lovely taste.
Mark:This, in fact, would be excellent not only...
Mark:grated on top of, let's say, a pasta dish, but it would be great for dessert with honey.
Bruce:This would be delicious with that.
Bruce:But if you want to save for desserts, it'll be some of the more intense ones.
Bruce:Now, part of the sweetness, I think, also comes from the mild aging, right?
Bruce:The sweetness happens over that year of aging, as the cheese starts to convert, the fats convert, the proteins change.
Bruce:So now we're going to move down the board and we're going to a two year.
Bruce:Age two year.
Bruce:Now the two year age jumps in price.
Bruce:It went from about 18 a pound to about 27 a pound.
Bruce:And you can sometimes find this two year even at Whole Foods.
Bruce:I'm, I'm busy cutting cheese and we, I just wanna say we bought this from Amelia food love.com and along with our cheese and we paid for it.
Bruce:We didn't get it for free.
Bruce:Um, came this lovely little cheese knife.
Mark:But the first thing I can say is it looks to the eye drier than the one year.
Mark:Mm hmm.
Mark:It looks, for lack of a better word, cakier rather than creamier.
Mark:It is remarkably sweeter.
Bruce:It is, but it also, afterwards, I've swallowed it, and I'm getting a little sourness afterwards.
Mark:Yes.
Mark:In fact, when I swallowed this cheese, this is fascinating, when I swallowed this parmesan parmesan.
Mark:Now, when I breathe in and out, it's much more in my nose, it is much more present than the one year age.
Mark:I will say that the word that did come to mind was balanced.
Mark:And I do think that this is a better balance of flavors.
Mark:The one year it felt like the salt, the creaminess, the sweetness, the slightly sweet.
Mark:a sour edge, and he felt like they were disparate.
Mark:This one feels like it's more a central whole thing.
Bruce:And that's all about time.
Bruce:That's what happens when you're aging.
Bruce:Now, Mark is going to cut into this little wedge of three year age.
Bruce:Now, when we say age, that means that's before they open the wheel, right?
Bruce:The wheel sits and ages.
Bruce:And, oh, he just cut me this piece.
Bruce:And I'm looking at the color.
Bruce:Will Mark taste it?
Bruce:Well, I'm gonna post a picture in our Facebook group so that you could see the color difference of these four cheeses next to each other, how it, the four Italians, the four Italian cheeses, how it gets a little yellower, a little darker as it ages.
Bruce:Now I'm putting the three year.
Bruce:If you, now we have a big block of this, and if you dare to grate this onto pasta, kill you.
Mark:This is for eating with wine.
Mark:I will say, This is super subtle, the grassy nuts in this are super subtle, the sweetness is now down, in my opinion, from the previous one, and it is very sweet.
Mark:It has a little grassy, herbal, mowed lawn quality about it.
Mark:It does.
Mark:It's beautiful.
Mark:When I tasted this, the first thing I sat here and thought is, I wish I had a glass of red wine.
Mark:Because it would be nice to put this, uh, to the test with a glass of red wine and just see what they feel like together.
Mark:Because it, it is.
Bruce:It's really interesting is when you watch videos of Italian cheesemakers tasting these cheeses, they dip them or put a drop of super aged balsamic syrupy vinegar and you taste them with the vinegar.
Bruce:And that also helps balance.
Bruce:Now, according to the manufacturer of this cheese.
Bruce:They claim the three year gets even crumblier, but we're not finding that.
Bruce:We think it's a lot of sweeter, but then again, we have a little sliver on the platter.
Bruce:We're not pulling it off the big block.
Bruce:Now, the fourth Italian cheese we're going to taste is a four year age.
Bruce:Now, I do want to say that you can go ahead and also buy five year, six year, seven year.
Bruce:Okay.
Bruce:So even sell up to nine.
Mark:Okay.
Mark:So just to say, if we, so you said that the one year was About 18 a pound.
Bruce:And you said that...
Bruce:About 27 a pound for 2 years.
Bruce:What's a 3 year run?
Bruce:It's about 35 a pound.
Bruce:And what's a 4th year run?
Bruce:Then we jumped.
Bruce:That's almost 50 a pound.
Bruce:Wow.
Bruce:The
Mark:big jump.
Mark:No wonder we have such a tiny little piece here in front of us.
Bruce:And it's also why we don't have the 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 year because they jump up to upwards of 100 a pound.
Bruce:And so we have a tiny
Mark:sliver of the 4 year.
Mark:Now this is...
Mark:Much golder,
Bruce:it is.
Bruce:It's very gold and I can actually see crystals in the cheese.
Bruce:You know, those little tyrosine crystals, crystals that grow.
Bruce:Yes, I can taste it.
Bruce:They're crunching under my teeth.
Bruce:This is crumblier.
Bruce:When I bite it, it's drier and crumblier.
Bruce:It is.
Bruce:It doesn't get that melty smoothness that the three year had.
Mark:This is got these little crystals as Bruce says it's a little so it has a slight weird crunchiness to it It is super balanced.
Mark:I would say my overall impression of it is that it is one flavor now I can pick out Nut notes like nuts nut oils particularly I can I can still pick out the grassiness I get a little bit of sour cream edge, especially after I swallow it a little bit, I can taste a slight sweetness, not as far as Gorgonzola, of course, and that's a blue cheese, but still just the way Gorgonzola has a little bit of a sweet edge to it.
Mark:I can kind of taste that in it.
Bruce:I'm getting some like dried fig.
Bruce:I'm getting some like the beginnings of some dried fruit flavors.
Bruce:Yeah, dried cherries.
Bruce:Yeah, so what I think you're right about a single flavor as opposed to like the two year, which you had these explosions of sweet and savory happening in different parts of your mouth.
Bruce:Here, it's beautiful and soft and all happening sort of at once.
Bruce:Mm hmm.
Bruce:It's
Mark:very round.
Mark:Very round flavor.
Mark:So if, you know, I'm going to do this and if I had to rate these on a one to ten scale, I would say that the canned pre packaged stuff, I'm going to be really nice and I'm going to give it a one.
Mark:A one point zero.
Mark:Out of?
Mark:1.
Mark:0 out of 10.
Mark:The prepackaged stuff, the prepackaged grated Parmesan from North America, for me, like a 2.
Mark:5.
Bruce:Okay, I'll agree with that.
Bruce:I'll only jump in if I disagree with you.
Mark:Okay, for the one year Italian Parmigiano Reggiano, I would probably give that about a 5.
Mark:In the overall scheme of what I've tasted here, like a very, very solid, good cheese.
Bruce:I would have always given that an eight until I tasted the others.
Bruce:Correct.
Bruce:This
Mark:is my problem.
Mark:And the others have put it in a perspective.
Mark:The two year, again, I'm going to go up around seven and a half, 7.
Mark:5 along in there.
Mark:Again, it was interesting.
Mark:But it just pales in comparison to the three and the four year, which I'm going to put up in the 9.
Mark:0, 9.
Mark:2, 9.
Mark:3.
Mark:Which
Bruce:did you like better, the three or four?
Bruce:I
Mark:think that I actually like the three year the best.
Bruce:I did too.
Bruce:I like the three year the best because it was just so...
Bruce:Beautifully balanced.
Bruce:I like the flavor profile of the three.
Bruce:And
Mark:I think we should confess in this taste test.
Mark:I am a person who likes giant flavors.
Mark:So I like chili crisp.
Mark:I like anchovies.
Mark:I like very strong fish flavors.
Mark:I like big flavors.
Mark:I like Bourbon that has a little edge to it when bourbons get super aged I actually don't like them anymore because I like a little rough edge around things So that's just my palate and how my taste and for me The four year was a little bit starting to be like a really old aged bourbon.
Mark:It was starting to get Round.
Mark:And I just like a few spots.
Mark:I want a Corona virus where it's got spikes coming off of it.
Bruce:And I like the three year too, but I liked it for different reasons.
Bruce:I think actually I love the four year for the crumbliness and the, I love the texture and I love the little crystals in it.
Bruce:They were wonderful.
Bruce:I'm not like Mark.
Bruce:I don't like stinky fishes.
Bruce:I'll take a trout over a mackerel any day.
Bruce:Not me.
Bruce:I'll take a white burgundy.
Bruce:A white burgundy reminds me of this four year aged Parmigiano Reggiano.
Mark:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mark:And Or so is a gorgeous thing.
Bruce:I mean, we only have a little sliver of it left, but maybe I'm going to dig through the wine cellar and see if we have a good white burgundy for tonight.
Bruce:I can assure you we don't.
Mark:Oh, that's too bad.
Mark:So, uh, I assure you we don't have any wine that fine.
Bruce:Perhaps, perhaps in a future episode, we will come back to this and taste the five year, six year, seven year.
Bruce:Um, the place I ordered cheese from in Italy, the Emilia.
Bruce:food love.
Bruce:They actually have 100 month aged, which is like nine plus years.
Bruce:And it was almost brown looking in the photo.
Bruce:And I was like, Ew, I don't know that
Mark:I want to find this website.
Mark:Just check down on the show notes to this podcast episode.
Mark:Or if you're on our website where this podcast lives on the blog page for this podcast, there will be a link.
Mark:Transcribed to this site.
Mark:Um, and Bruce is going to take a picture of the cheeses.
Mark:I'll post those also on our website, as well as the Facebook group cooking with person mark so that you can see these four cheeses and what they look like.
Mark:And you, if you want to do your own taste test, we'd love you to do that.
Mark:And we don't get a kickback.
Mark:We're not sponsored by these people.
Mark:No, we have no financial connection to them except paying them.
Mark:Yeah, except they took our credit card, um, except paying them.
Mark:And so, uh, if you want to taste some of these and then post your results on Facebook in the group Cooking with Bruce and Mark, we would love to see that as well.
Mark:So that's our taste testing notes.
Mark:Those were, that was a fun little bit.
Mark:I'm sorry if it seemed as if we were going on and on about these things, but Parmesan is just something, Parmigiano Reggiano, I should say, it's just something that it makes or breaks a lot of dishes.
Mark:And then there are Parmigiano Reggianos, which I think a lot of North Americans don't know, which we were trying, which go beyond cooking and they just become, quote, unquote, eating cheeses.
Bruce:In Italy, it is known as the king of cheese for a reason.
Bruce:Yeah, for a reason.
Mark:All right.
Mark:Up next on our podcast, what's making us happy in food this week?
Bruce:Apples.
Bruce:It is apples.
Bruce:season.
Bruce:It is mid early October.
Bruce:If you're listening
Mark:to this when the podcast actually drops, it's apple season in New England.
Bruce:But the sad thing is the orchard that we usually go to up in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, lost all of their apples early in the spring.
Bruce:Everything butted out and we had a freeze.
Bruce:We had an ice dump and the tree is 30 inches of snow and the trees lost all their apples and this poor Orchard doesn't have a single apple.
Bruce:However, where we live, there is a town nearby that's closer to us.
Bruce:They do have apples.
Bruce:And I'm going apple picking there this weekend because I just love, there's nothing like an apple
Bruce:straight off the tree.
Bruce:I won't eat apples anytime but end of September through end of October.
Mark:Apples off the tree unfits you for apples the rest of the year.
Bruce:It's like Reggiano.
Bruce:Parmigiano Reggiano unfits fits you for the canned one.
Mark:So, I'm going to go back, what's made me happy in food this week is actually not in this week.
Mark:I'm going to go back to that, uh, Rosh Hashanah dinner that we had now several weeks ago.
Mark:And I want to tell you about this baklava that Bruce made.
Mark:He made this delicious baklava that is a pecan.
Mark:It's made with nut oil, no dairy, and not only that, once you make the baklava, he then pours a fennel seed and orange syrup over the top of it.
Mark:So we've got this fennel orange syrup over the baklava.
Mark:It is absurdly delicious.
Mark:It was a recipe in our book, Vegetarian Dinner Parties, which is sadly out of print, but you can still find used copies available online.
Mark:And you can still see this gorgeously photographed book that got us into the James Beard Awards, Vegetarian Dinner Parties, and this pecan.
Mark:Uh, baklava with the orange fennel syrup.
Mark:It's in there and, oh, let me tell you that he made a giant 9x13 pan, I bet.
Mark:We all had a piece at Rosh Hashanah, then the next morning, I had a piece for breakfast, and then the pan had to go away because I was too afraid I was going to eat the rest of that pan.
Bruce:Well, I was afraid of my A1C, but here's...
Bruce:Let me also say about the book, Vegetarian Dinner Parties, we have a lot of copies, and if you are interested in a signed copy, you can send us a note via our website, bruceandmark.
Bruce:com, and I can arrange with you to get you a signed copy and how you can pay for it and how I can ship it.
Mark:Okay, great.
Mark:So there's how you do it.
Mark:So thanks for being with us this week.
Mark:This was an interesting episode, our first ever taste test.
Mark:I think we have a chocolate cookie taste test coming up.
Mark:We do.
Mark:Chocolate chip cookies.
Mark:And we're going to do all kinds of chocolate chip cookies, not homemade.
Mark:All kinds of store bought chocolate chip cookies from all to low end, all the way up to the high end
Bruce:and some of the low ends that used to be high end, but they've kind
Bruce:of fallen.
Mark:Oh yeah.
Mark:Well, anyway, that's all coming up.
Mark:Up beyond this episode are recipes we're making in the kitchen, interviews with people and their books or chefs and their restaurants, as well as taste tests.
Mark:And also we've got some other surprises ahead.
Mark:So welcome to our kitchen as always.
Mark:And we look forward to seeing you on the next episode of cooking with Bruce and Mark.
