Summer Parmigiano-Reggiano, recipes and more

The arrival of a glorious chunk of Summer Parmigiano-Reggiano is a perfect reason to plan a small food gathering of friends. Drop drops of balsamic vinegar on a chunk of cheese and have a meal!

This Parmigiano-Reggiano is started with a mixture of milk harvested in the summer from a majority of Bruna Alpina and Frisona cows, with a few Vacche Rossa and Montbeillards thrown in, who have been enjoying the summer pastoral flowers and grasses of the Alpine meadows.

Not all Parmigiano-Reggiano is created equally, and they change from season to season. These wheels will be cracked in about three weeks when we ship to you, about 36 months from inception.

Summer cheeses are often the most heady and dense in flavor - due to the concentration of strong summer grasses where the cows forage during that time of year. As compared to, say, milk collected in the winter when the cows are fed a higher concentration of dry hay.

Fine quality mountain Parmigiano-Reggiano should have a sweet, fresh flavor with a long, well-rounded finish. There should be no sharpness or powdery dryness, even with the older cheeses. Since it has been aged over 32 months, it will be dryer than the younger cheese, with a more crumply and grainy texture. This Summer Parmigiano-Reggiano is full of the crystalized amino acids, a true indication of the age of the cheese.

The naturally forming crystals of tyrosine multiply after two years and keep appearing in this science experiment (that’s what cheese is) of proteins and fats trapped together amongst like kinds (other fats and proteins) come together to make cheese. And as they get together, well, after time they start to unravel, in the process creating these wonderful tiny pockets of crunch.

It is this wonderful texture that makes the shaved pieces look spotty and the chunks full of crunch!

You can never have enough Parmigiano-Reggiano on hand in your cold-pantry. Think about shaving onto a plate of hot pasta and as the farmers markets get “green” with spring crops, you can crumble Summer Parmigiano-Reggiano on top.

Or think about the simple plate of spaghetti, slathered in a perfect olive oil and densely covered in your summer Parmigiano-Reggiano!

Quick, simple, perfect. And amazingly amazing good!

Capellini #3 (Also known as Spaghettini #3) Italian pasta is about a third thinner than spaghetti, but slightly thicker than what you might think of as typical angel hair pasta. It is a good choice with light seafood sauces. Made with certified Italian Grown Durum wheat

A simple pound cake with a twist. Use any citrus.

Extra Virgin Olive oil from gravity extraction but before the olives are pressed through mats. Unfiltered with very low acidity (0.1%) - much lower than required to be called "extra virgin". Blend of fourteen varieties, principally Picuda, Picual and Hojiblanca.

The smell is wonderful, just as you would want a newly opened bottle of olive oil to be!

The first big slurp rushes memories of a wonderful oil! Light and olivey, round, buttery on top, then finishing with a pencil tip of delightful bitterness high in the cheeks. Followed by a strong tickle of sharpness that only a newly harvested oil can deliver!

Delicate sips reveal sophisticated hints of olive, avocado, and artichoke with a lightness of being. But if you venture into a big gulp and a backward thrust of the oil into your throat, you'll get a big surprise!

Hidden amongst all the light, friendly appearance is a powerful punch of high-powered zing and a burn that declares this oil is alive!

Nunez de Prado is like a homecoming and a new friend all rolled into one! What fun to have this special, wonderful olive oil back in our lives!

Straightforward recipe

Wadaman's white sesame paste is an easy way to add a little roasted sesame richness to just about everything.

Smooth and creamy, with a gentle sweetness and a wonderfully nutty aroma, it’s meant to complement rather than take over.

Squeeze a little over steamed vegetables, noodles, tofu, rice, fish or chicken. Mix it with soy sauce, rice vinegar or miso for a quick dressing or dipping sauce, or add a little to a bowl of greens.

It’s especially good with vegetables, where the richness of the sesame gives simple ingredients a little more depth.

And don't stop at savory. Try it with toast and honey, over fruit, or squeezed onto ice cream or mochi. Think of it as a little squeezable sesame boost, with just enough oomph to make your day a bit more interesting.

What's Happening in the Store

Thursday, October 1 – Meet the Makers Chocolate Tasting

Seattle Thaw members: Stop by for an exclusive event with Umami Insider. Watch a demo and learn how to make ramen with shio koji garlic sauce--and then taste the final dish! Plus, sample all the other flavorful products in the new Umami Insider pantry collection. 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.

Chocolate in October 2026
Friday & Monday - Saturday 10am-5pm
ChefShop Retail Shop, 1425 Elliott Ave West, Seattle

The term "fregula" (also "fregola") may derive from the Latin word "fricare," meaning chopping up: little fragment, splinter, crumb, scrap, corpuscle. These tasty little pasta balls are created by rubbing coarse semolina into small balls in the presence of water.

Unlike North African or Middle Eastern Couscous, the small Sardinian couscous balls are then toasted in an oven, giving them a toasty, rustic, homey taste. This medium-sized fregula is a staple in the Sardinian kitchen, both on the coast and in the interior.

Fregula Sarda pasta is suitable for meat and seafood dishes. You can also try it with a bean dish like Fregula con Fagioli, the Sardinian version of Pasta e Fagioli, or Pasta with Borlotti Beans and Kale.

Fregula Sardinian Pasta may be seasoned with tomato and sausage or used to make its most famous dish, "fregula con cocciula" (fregola with clams) from Cagliari. Given its density and texture, it can absorb a lot of liquid without becoming mushy, making it a great pasta for soups. Serve it like the locals, in brodo (broth) either beef, chicken, or mushroom.

Fregula Sarda pasta is at its best when cooked in boiling water for 10-12 minutes.

Whole cramelized onions are used as a garnish for roasted meats or birds, served with sauteed potatoes and a comforting red wine from a sunny place, a Chateauneuf-du-Pape, for example. The key to successfully caramalizing onions is to take your time. the end result, though, is amazing - and a wonderful side, especially if you like sweet onions.

This red-in-color wine vinegar is delicious. Thin in viscosity, when it first reaches your lips, it feels luscious, rich, and thick.

Unlike some vinegars, the gentle twinge at the back of the throat dissipates quickly and is more akin to a nicely-aged Balsamic.

Like many, if not all red wines, if you suck in a sip, your nose will pucker at the tip, and hints of red wine vinegar will be present.

If you are willing to savor the flavors and the gourmet wine vinegar slowly, you will feel the hints of red strawberry (creaminess) laced with vanilla and hints of little tiny violets!

I can tell you that it is a wonderful, joyous surprise, and one can imagine that it makes everything taste better. What a wonderful treat this is. Agrodolce!

This is not your every-day clover honey, not by a long shot. Collected and made by bees in the high plains, (over 5,000 feet up) out west in Wyoming and South Dakota.

There, the luscious, sweet clover grows in abundance in fields and along stream beds, and the bees love the yellow and white blossoms, some of which stand at the ends of three foot tall leafy clover stems. That is some healthy clover!

This is truly what clover honey is supposed to taste like. Not like what you get in the squeezy bear, which, heads-up, is probably not even honey. You will not be disappointed with this liquidy-golden nectar.

Selected by Food & Wine magazine as the best Clover Honey available anywhere!

When you are cooking with honey, you want to focus mostly on flavor. Adapted from "Chocolate and Zucchini" by Clotilde Dusoulier (Broadway Press)

This was the very first Fleur de Sel we carried, back in 1999, and we have loved it ever since! It's a beautiful French sea salt made from the least salty, purest part of the evaporating water in the salt pond. It is the sweetest salt we have ever tasted.

This Fleur de Sel de Guerande salt from M. Gilles Hervy is the genuine article. It's an unrefined, unadulterated, and unprocessed sea salt. Its small, flaky crystals taste of the sea and its minerals.

This unprocessed sea salt is for finishing (rather than cooking), perfect for bringing out the flavors in grilled meat, salads, or raw vegetables. A favorite French treat is fresh radishes dipped in Fleur de Sel, served with sweet butter and freshly sliced baguette.

The area around the town of Guerande in Brittany enjoys a milder microclimate than the rest of the region, filled with salt marshes and benefiting from clean Atlantic currents. That's why Guerande is famous for it's a veritable haven for harvesting unprocessed sea salt.

The "Fleur de Salé, which translates to "flower of salt," is the cream of the salt crop it's a single day's evaporation of salt from the very top layer of seawater in the salt pans.


This top layer is carefully skimmed off, yielding a delicate and prized salt. Fleur de Sel de Guerande is harvested in limited quantities. For every 80 pounds of Sel Gris (hand-harvested sea salt from the entire season), only 3 pounds of Fleur de Sel are harvested.

Fleur de Sel de Guerande is known for being unrefined, unadulterated, and unprocessed. It retains its natural mineral content and carries the distinct flavors of the sea. Its small, delicate crystals dissolve easily and provide a pleasant crunch when used as a finishing salt.

Unlike many salt farmers, or "paludiers," the Hervy family has chosen to remain independent rather than joining a marketing cooperative to sell their wares. Gilles Hervy continues to work mostly with his family to produce this amazing, favorite salt!

This versatile, seasonal salad is loaded with texture, from crunchy to crisp to chewy. The beets, currants, and new onions all have a natural affinity to the sweet and tangy Late Harvest Sauvignon Blanc Agrodolce Vinegar, while the aromatics and spices give the salad a comforting warmth. You can serve this as a side dish, or pair it with grilled or smoked chicken or salmon for a nice lunch or brunch main course.

Temperatures are dropping. If your daytime temps are low enough we can start to ship ground again! Phew! The expedited shipping costs are ridiculous!

Professional pastry chefs are using ChefShop Grande Brut because it does several things well at once: deep flavor, smooth texture, rich color, easy blending, low acidity, and real versatility across applications. It is a many-trick cocoa powder.

We stock it now because after working with it ourselves, we found it spectacular! It makes a giant difference!

ChefShop Grande Brut contains 22% to 24% cocoa butter. That is significantly higher than most cocoa powders on the market, and it is one of the main reasons we chose it. That extra cocoa butter is not a minor detail. It changes how the cocoa tastes, how it blends, and what your finished desserts actually feel like.

Most people focus on cocoa percentage (and with cocoa powder it is always 100% as it has no sugar) and overlook fat content entirely. It is the balance between cocoa mass and cocoa butter that matters. Cocoa butter is the natural fat in the cacao bean, and it shapes everything about how cocoa performs in a recipe.
Shop now for ChefShop Grande Brut Cocoa Powder here!

SHARE THE LOVE Give the Gift of Love Through Food Gift Certificates available for any amount you choose. Get Gift Certificate →