Pass me the

“Always break it, never cut it,” says Paolo Caramaschi as he chips and wiggles away at three large, spear-shaped wedges of Parmigiano Reggiano with the tip of his coltello a mandorla (a stubby almond-shaped knife). We’re standing outside his family’s San Bernardino dairy, on the outskirts of Parma, which has seen four generations produce wheel upon wheel of the region’s most celebrated cheese for almost a century.

There are two reasons for not trying to cut a piece of Parmi into uniform slices. The first is that the cheese’s dry, granular texture easily crumbles, especially if you’re working with an 36-month aged cheese, or older. The second is that using a specific, traditional knife is what the rules dictate. And, when it comes to Parmigiano Reggiano, rules are there to be followed.

Most importantly, Parmigiano Reggiano is a cheese that can be made with only three precise ingredients (milk – from specific cows that graze on a specific diet, salt and rennet), in a particular process, in a limited area of Italy because of its Protected Designation of