Soffritto by Lucio Galletto

Soffritto by Lucio Galletto

Author:Lucio Galletto
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography
Publisher: Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd
Published: 2011-01-15T00:00:00+00:00


Day two

In the morning, so they can say they’ve been to the northern border of Lunigiana, they drive over the Cisa Pass, passing a sign that says, ‘Inizio zona d’origine parmigiano reggiano’ (Beginning of parmesan zone). ‘We’re in Emilia – ah, prosciutti, tortellini,’ says Lucio. ‘No,’ says Aulo, ‘we’re in Lunigiana. Those belong to us.’

They discover references everywhere to the Via Francigena. Clearly it’s become the latest thing in scholarly tourism. In the town of Berceto, the local bookstore is selling pilgrim plates. Lucio buys one as a souvenir of yesterday’s heroic walk, imagining the illustration looks like him. Just out of Berceto is a coffee outlet called Bar Via Francigena. Lucio wonders, ‘Is it getting too commercial?’

They escape into the deep mountains for an appointment with a maestro of pecorino. Near the village of Tavernelle, Leandro Boschetti, stiff-backed and white-moustachioed, is leaning on his gate waiting for them. He leads them into green pastures to meet his 200 little black sheep, and whistles piercingly so his dog will round them up.

He has an umbrella slung over his shoulder where his ancestors might have carried a rifle or a bow, but otherwise he could be a shepherd of any time in the past millennium. Every day he walks his flock 20 kilometres over grassy hills in search of grasses and herbs that will improve the flavour of the cheeses made by his wife and daughter-in-law, and of the meat from the sheep.

Leandro is amazed to hear that in Australia, sheep are used for wool, not cheese. He shears his sheep in the summer to make them more comfortable, but throws the wool away.

He milks the sheep at 6 am and 6 pm every day. He assembles them in a barn, ties a little stool to his bottom with a kind of safety belt, and hops round with a small bucket. The sheep are cooperative, and it doesn’t take long. They sleep in the barn overnight, so wolves won’t get them.

Leandro the sheep farmer: ‘We average six cheeses a day from their milk. You get a 2-kilogram cheese from 10 litres, and I can sell that for 16 euros. You should mature the cheese for 60 days, but pecorino is a personal taste. Some people prefer it fresh.

‘I’ve been doing this every day since I was 13 and I’m 69 now. My father showed me and I showed my son, who works with me. I’ve told him he should get off the land and go and work in the city, like all the other young people around here. It’s too hard. We barely make enough to support four people. But he loves it more than me. He won’t go.’

For lunch they try one of Aulo’s favourite mountain places, Gavarina d’Oro, near the village of Podenzana, which specialises in yet another form of testaroli, called, in local dialect, panigacci (which Lucio suspects must come from the same root word as the English ‘pancake’).

It’s a vast space, filled with large families at large tables.



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