Where in the world is Val?

Piadina with squacquerone and arugula, La Tua Piadina, Bologna It's not every day that you come across a food with a name as fun as squacquerone. So when I noticed it on a menu in Bologna, my interest was piqued. Squacquerone is a fresh cow's milk cheese. It's eaten when it's only a few days old. It looks something like cottage cheese, with curdy bits suspended in a milky slurry. The flavor is similar to cottage cheese as well, though it's a little tangier. It's typical of the region of Emilia-Romagna, and I saw it all over the place while I was there. The traditional way to eat squacquerone is on a piadina: an unleavened flatbread kind of like a tortilla that you fill with cheeses, cured meats, and vegetables. At the piadineria (the name for a shop that serves nothing but a few dozen kinds of piadine), you're almost sure to find a piadina with squacquerone and arugula. It's a killer combo: the peppery arugula is tempered by the tangy, creamy che...

Everywhere I went in Italy, I saw Philadelphia cream cheese. It showed up in the refrigerated aisles of groceries in Venice and Rome. It was employed with arugula and speck in sandwiches served at rest stops along the autostrada. It even popped up amongst a dozen kinds of cured ham at a very high end food shop in Bologna (one that sells the same Roi olive oil and Carnaroli risotto rice that we do). So what's that all about, anyway?

A bag of ricotta and the old castle: the primary attractions of San Gregorio "Come," said Emanuele . "We are going to the wild boar festival." So the two of us climbed into Emanuele's small white van and drove the narrow, winding, mountain roads to the nearby town of San Gregorio. "When I was a boy, my friends and I would ride our bikes to San Gregorio," he told me. "It was hard to get there, uphill the whole way. But going home again was easy." The drive into San Gregorio was perfectly romantic. The town is precariously perched along the ridge of a mountain peak. A medieval castle still defends the entrance to the old part of town (though today it is guarded by policemen who tell you where to park). As we approached the town, passing under the branches of blossoming redbud trees and the tiny, bright green foliage of early spring, it almost felt as though we were driving into a fairy tale. Walking the streets of the town was less ro...