By infopadweb 3 April 2024
PROVOLONE VALPADANA DOP
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DESCRIPTION, HISTORY AND CHARACTERISTICS OF THE DOP
Clearly of southern origin, production is today limited to an area that includes part of Lombardy, part of Veneto, some municipalities in the province of Trento and the entire territory of the province of Piacenza. A more uniform territory than it seems, which includes the Po Valley. The beginning of the production can be dated after the unification of Italy, when cheesemakers from the south moved to find the quantities of milk necessary to produce these large cheeses.
Provolone Valpadana is the stretched curd cheese that has the greatest variety of shapes and weights of any other dairy product. The plasticity of the curd allows master cheesemakers to delight in producing shapes of extremely varied weights. Even today, when visiting the maturing warehouses of producing dairies, one can come across some “experiments” of a creative cheesemaker.
The production regulations for Provolone Valpadana have safeguarded this dairy culture through the identification of standard geometric shapes, replicated in different weights. We thus distinguish 4 typical shapes: salami, melon/pear, truncated cone, flask.
The shaping designates the shape and weight (from less than a kilo to over 100 kilos), as well as the type of rennet (of bovine, sheep or goat origin) used in the processing which will determine the birth of a sweet or spicy Provolone Valpadana which, subsequently , it may possibly be available as smoked or long-seasoned.
Another characteristics of Provolone Valpadana that make it iconic, is that of the tying, still carried out by hand before being placed in the maturing warehouse and at the entrance of which, if the cheese is considered adequate, the so-called “cockade” will be affixed, the guarantee seal which must be present on all shapes, in order to protect and certify the characteristics of this cheese as required by the production specification.
Consortium
The Consortium for the Protection of Provolone Valpadana
The Consortium for the protection of Provolone Valpadana is a voluntary body, established in 1975 with the name of Consortium for the protection of Typical Italian Provolone and based in Piacenza. In 1986 the Consortium changed its name and became the Consortium of the typical Provolone cheese, with the headquarters moving to Cremona. In 1993 it changed its name again to Consorzio Tutela Provolone and then adopted its current name in 2002: Consorzio Tutela Provolone Valpadana.
1996 is the key year, since the designation of origin “Valpadana” joins the term “Provolone”, having obtained recognition as a Protected Designation of Origin (D.O.P.) cheese.
The Consortium is therefore responsible for protecting this cheese, which has a very strong identity both in the Italian and international panorama and needs an authoritative and official body, expression of the producers of the raw material (milk), expression of the processors and of the seasoners who protect it, that guarantee its consistency and excellence and help make its inimitable qualities known.
The Consortium, therefore, supervises the different phases of the life of Provolone Valpadana D.O.P. and it does so in a very rigorous way, on the specific assignment of the competent Ministry. But it does not limit itself to monitoring: with an eye towards the future and the development of the markets, it offers technical-scientific assistance to increasingly improve production technologies, both from a health and organoleptic point of view.
In practice: the Consortium is a shield that protects all players in the supply chain from any type of unfair competition, while for consumers it is a guarantee that defends against fraud, counterfeiting and related damage: economic and health hazard.
Recipe
SWEET POTATO RAVIOLI WITH ROSEMARY AND SPICY VALPADANA DOP PROVOLONE CHEESE
| 4 people Preparation: 30′ + rest Cooking: 1h |
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Ingredients:
– 100 g spicy Provolone DOP
– 80 g sweet Provolone DOP
– 200 g flour 00
– 2 eggs
– 1 yolk
– 300 g orange sweet potatoes
– 1 small blond onion
– one sprig of rosemary
– 12 sage leaves
– 40 g butter
– extra virgin olive oil
– black pepper
– salt
Wash and dry the sweet potatoes, prick them with a fork and bake in a preheated oven at 220° for about 45 minutes. Mix the flour with the eggs for 10 minutes and let the dough rest covered for 30 minutes. Peel and finely chop the onion and let it stew gently in a saucepan with 2 tablespoons of oil and half a dl of water until the water has evaporated. Cut the sweet potatoes in half, keep half of them aside, scoop out the flesh of the remaining ones, mash them through a potato masher and season with the DOP spicy Provolone cheese grated with a medium-hole grater, a pinch of salt, a grind of pepper, the chopped rosemary leaves and the cooked onion. Roll out the dough into a thin sheet, cut out 6-centimeter disks, place a teaspoon of the sweet potato mixture in the center of each, and form the ravioli. Cook them in plenty of lightly boiling salted water for 2-3 minutes, drain and season with the butter melted with the sage until it becomes hazelnut in color, the sweet potato kept aside cut into cubes, and the 100 g of DOP sweet Provolone reduced to thin slices.
Regions
PROVOLONE VALPADANA DOP
| Emilia Romagna Lombardy Trentino Alto Adige Veneto |
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