Say yes to cheese

Unless both my source and my memory are incorrect, the term ‘polentini’ is used by southern Italians to denigrate their polenta-eating northern brethren. How anyone could possibly mistake an appetite for polenta for something worth derogation is entirely beyond me.

I didn’t jump on a train from Milan to Bergamo solely to eat polenta. No, I was there in order to elevate my spirit through contact with a combination of historical architecture, views, cobblestones, ramparts, churches, frescos, local colour, citadel, and Donizetti. Lake Como isn't too far from Bergamo and Byron was certainly elevated by his trip there. I walked up a very significant hill reach the old city - cobblestones, they’re mighty hard work – and on the way, I took in enough bakeries advertising cakes called ‘polenta e ösei’ to figure out that they were a local speciality and to earmark them for consumption later in the day.

My calculation of a good time to visit Bergamo wasn’t exactly on the money. Being a Monday, all the museums were closed. Being September 2007, the cathedral and basilica were shut for refurbishment. Fortunately, the restaurants were open and a polentissimo lunch was the highlight of my very civilised daytrip to Bergamo. There were many more interesting options than the mushrooms sautéed with garlic and parsley, served with a cheese and polenta cake but I chose this one because it almost resembles something I would cook chez moi. Ah, kitchen nostalgia: polenta tart with leek and blue cheese, garlicky mushrooms in red wine, token leafy greens… Anyway, chez Donizetti, the mushrooms were thick and slippery and the polenta cake was respectably cheesy.

Eaten in dappled sunlight, under extremely tasteful arches, the dish was let down only by the wine, which in spite of being a soave classico (my future husband, perhaps), was more like an aceto classico. Nonetheless, the meal left me reasonably content and, mindful of the polenta cake I envisaged as an afternoon snack, I only accepted the cheese and dessert menu for the purposes of information glancing. The charade of restraint was over – and really, it’s hard to play an entertaining game of charades on your own – as soon as I saw a cheese plate headed by local Tallegio. I had devoted a small amount of the train ride north to Bergamo to thoughts of Tallegio, a cheese of which I am particularly fond. And so it continued: Tallegio, Vedeseta, Strachitund. The cheeses were so wonderful and so perfectly matched that they made up for the later disappointment of the polenta cakes. I post a bodgy photo of them because that is what they were: bodgy. I’d expected heavy, syrup-soaked polenta delights and what I got was sponge cake topped with chocolate cream and something that might have been chestnut paste, all covered in a too sweet sugar and polenta mixture. Had I foregone the tallegio for the polenta cakes, I would have been sorely disappointed. I’m sure there is a lesson there.