Italy to sit down to ‘Parmigiano-Reggiano Night’ – la prima cena web 2.0 della storia
Italian cheesemaker consortium designated October 27 as the ‘Parmigiano-Reggiano Night’ in Italy. The social media campaign is the first collective “web 2.0 dinner” in history, say the organizers, who asked all the cheese fans to prepare their favorite meal using Italy’s national cheese (also known as Parmesan cheese) and to show their solidarity with cheese makers hard hit by earthquakes in spring 2012. The participants who post photos of their Parmigiano-Reggiano menu using the special Facebook Application will also receive a small gift of gratitude.
The initiative belongs to Parmigiano-Reggiano Facebook page. With more than 200,000 fans, the page is by far the most popular than any other Protected Designation of Origin (P.D.O.) product page in Italy (Chianti wine, Fontina cheese, Gorgonzola, or balsamic vinegar).
‘Parmigiano-Reggiano Night’ is set to be launched at the Salone del Gusto in Turin (25-29 October 2012). One of the first Parmigianorecipe is “Risotto cacio e pepe” signed by chef Massimo Bottura, Italy’s best chef for the second year in a row.
“After the earthquakes of 20 and 29 May and in these difficult months of coming to life again – explains the Italian Cheese Consortium’s co-director Riccardo Deserti – we have seen a great many instances of solidarity with the cheese-makers affected and for our product. The Internet played a special role in ensuring contact with the hundreds of thousands of people actively involved and in helping them understand what had happened, and the ways in which they could help and support us by buying online”. “So, we thought of using these same tools to thank everyone – continues Deserti – starting with the almost 200,000 fans (record-breaking among Italian PDOs) who follow us on Facebook: this led to the idea of promoting something unique which could, even symbolically, reflect the unity between people and stress the value of solidarity”.
Parmigiano-Reggiano is produced exclusively in the provinces of Parma, Reggio Emilia, Modena and parts of the provinces of Mantua and Bologna, on the plains, hills and mountains enclosed between the rivers Po and Reno. The Parmesan cheese is a hard granular cheese with a long and natural maturation. It’s a highly concentrated cheese and contains only 30% water and 70% nutrients.
