chicken, spinach & Parmesan dinner

pasta dinner

 prepared by Tom White

photo by Styrous®

chicken       
spinach      
pasta    
pesto
Parmesan cheese (grated)  

Tom White:
Instead of basil, spinach was used for this pesto.

toast pine nuts
cool then pulse or grind nuts with wilted spinach, fresh Italian parsley and garlic
add olive oil and process until it's begging for Parmesan 
dice grilled chicken breast then mix with "pesto" 
boil organic spaghetti to texture preference  
pour "pesto" and chicken over pasta 
grate Parmesan over all.  

Serve hot!   

Parmesan cheese

According to legend, Parmigiano-Reggiano was created during the Middle Ages in Bibbiano, in the province of Reggio Emilia and spread to the Parma and Modena areas. Historical documents show that in the 13th and 14th centuries, Parmigiano was already very similar to that produced today. Some evidence suggests that the name was used for Parmesan cheese in Italy and France in the 17th-19th century.    

        

It was praised as early as 1348 in the writings of Boccaccio; and in his Decameron he writes:

'. . .  a mountain, all of grated Parmesan cheese', on which 'dwell folk that do nought else but make macaroni and ravioli, and boil them in capon's broth, and then throw them down to be scrambled for; and hard by flows a rivulet of Vernaccia, the best that ever was drunk, and never a drop of water therein.'      

During the Great Fire of London of 1666, Samuel Pepys buried his "Parmazan cheese, as well as his wine and some other things" to preserve them.  

         

In the memoirs of Giacomo Casanova, he remarked that the name "Parmesan" was a misnomer common throughout an "ungrateful" Europe in his time (mid-18th century), as the cheese was produced in the town of Lodi, Lombardy, not Parma. Though Casanova knew his table and claimed in his memoir to have been compiling a dictionary of cheeses (never completed), his comment has been taken to refer mistakenly to a grana cheese similar to "Parmigiano", Grana Padano, which is produced in the Lodi area.     

        

Parmigiano-Reggiano has been the target of organized crime in Italy, particularly the Mafia or Camorra, which ambush delivery trucks on the Autostrada A1 in northern Italy between Milan and Bologna, hijacking shipments. The cheese is ultimately sold in southern Italy. Between November 2013 and January 2015, an organized crime gang stole 2039 wheels of Parmigiano-Reggiano from warehouses in northern and central Italy.          

       

Parmigiano-Reggiano factory - 2005

photo: Sputnikcccp

pesto

Pesto originated in Genoa, the capital city of Liguria, Italy. It traditionally consists of crushed garlic, European pine nuts, coarse salt, basil leaves, hard cheese such as Parmigiano-Reggiano (also known as Parmesan cheese) or Pecorino Sardo (cheese made from sheep's milk), all blended with olive oil.       

It goes back as far as the Roman age. The ancient Romans used to eat a similar paste called moretum, which was made by crushing garlic, salt, cheese, herbs, olive oil and vinegar together. The use of this paste in the Roman cuisine is mentioned in the Appendix Vergiliana, an ancient collection of poems where the author dwells on the details about the preparation of moretum. During the Middle Ages, a popular sauce in the Genoan cuisine was agliata, which was basically a mash of garlic and walnuts, as garlic was a staple in Liguria; a name given to the region by the Ancient Greeks. The introduction of basil, the main ingredient of modern pesto, occurred in more recent times and is first documented only in the mid-19th century, when gastronomist Giovanni Battista Ratto published his book La Cuciniera Genovese in 1863.