Sunday, April 29, 2018

One more outing before we go

On Saturday Pam and Romano took us to the Antica Corte Pallavicina. The place is a very fancy hotel and restaurant, a 14th-century manor house surrounded by pretty countryside.
We weren't interested in either restaurant or hotel, which are above our pay grade, but we wanted to see its Museo del Culatello. which turned out to be an elaborate exhibit about that specialty cured pork delicacy from this part of the Po River valley.

Culatello is made from the same part of the pig that's used for prosciutto di Parma (the back end), but it's cut into smaller pieces and stuffed into the pig's bladder or stomach before being cured, instead of being left as a whole leg. It's delicious, a bit more full-bodied and less creamy-silky than prosciutto. 

Pigs are celebrated in the culatello exhibition and all over the site. Younger visitors were invited to ride on these specimens.

At one point I went through the wrong door and blundered into this room. This appears to be quite a glamorous place.

The most exciting sight was the basement where the culatelli are cured. It was a maze of dark, barely lit rooms full of suspended bundles of pork, exuding an entrancing aroma. (That's Pam lurking in the shadows.)
When you consider that each one of those culatelli will retail for 100 euros a kilo or more, you can see that this is practically Fort Knox. We were sorry none of us had thought to bring a large tote bag along.

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