Word: parmesan
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...major stopovers he likes to take a hotel suite-cum-kitchen, install a big round table and recruit a passel of local friends to sample his creations like Spaghetti Pavarotti. (Recipe for his sauce: half a tube of Italian tomato paste dissolved in olive oil, then mixed with grated Parmesan cheese and finely chopped parsley and garlic.) Nobody knows Pavarotti's precise poundage. He keeps his own scales and his own counsel. When asked how much he weighs, he replies: "Less than before...
...them come. When they arrive, she becomes distracted from her work in progress and writes instead about her guests: the British desert lover, described as an "experiential snob," because he thinks that his search for God makes him superior to his wife who quests only for a better Parmesan cheese; a 60-year-old soil erosion specialist who fancies himself the savior of other people's lives and careers; and his young, adoring hungarian wife...
...Mafia, for once, was not involved. The masterminds who pulled off Italy's ripest heist of the year are just greedy cheese merchants who smelled a good thing. When the Italian government last spring auctioned off 19,000 tons of Parmesan cheese that it had bought to support falling prices, a few wholesalers snapped up practically the whole lot-in effect, cornering the market. Ever since, the speculators have released their hoard of the golden, crumbly protein-rich cheese only when supplies were scarce...
...result, retail prices of Parmesan in many stores have nearly doubled, from $2.70 a pound in midsummer to $4.70 a pound currently. The price hike caused an outpouring of rage. "Bastaf" cried desperate Italian housewives, forced to turn up their noses at the fragrant wheels stacked on their grocers-shelves."When Parmesan went up to $4 a pound," said one Milanese widow living on a pension, "I told my grocer to eat it himself...
...boycott, together with high prices, has cut Parmesan consumption by half. It has also inspired the government to enact a punitive measure calling for four-year prison terms and fines of up to $120,000 for anyone found guilty of keeping essential goods off the market for private gain. Some of the Parmesan speculators may yet be arrested on such charges...