Raffi is here with a post on pecorino romano as a reasonably approximating substitute for parmesan; I wrote him a quick email earlier to recommend stravecchio, which has lately been a stand up stand in for me. But after writing him I wondered what stravecchio was, and a Google search just confused the issue further. It seems that stravecchio may refer to a number of different cheeses, and even some kinds of alcohol, so I began to think of it as just a kind of superlative modifier meaning extra old (vecchio means old in Italian, and stra seems to stand in for extra- a lot, eg strangere vs Spanish extranjero). There exist, for instance, a stravecchio parmeggiano reggiano, a stravecchio grana padano, and a cheese from Wisconsin simply called stravecchio (a name, by the way, which makes perfect sense if they're trying to differentiate their product from its European counterpart -- either for legal reasons or otherwise -- and they still want to maintain a European feel). In any case, I feel a bit foolish having passed along this essentially meaningless suggestion to Raffi, but it turns out I'm not the only one to have been addled by stravecchio's unfamiliarity.
Oh, by the way, I should also mention that my experience with pecorino romano is also good, and that it's a decent parmesan alternative (even though one is made with sheep's milk and the other with cow's), but I definitely prefer the full flavor of parmaggiano, particularly for eating by the slice. I get mine on the cheap from Caputo's Cheese Market in Melrose Park, which unfortunately (or fortunately, if Will's analysis is to be believed) doesn't have much of a web presence.
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