Pennisi Cuisine, Balaclava St

Saturday's visit to Pennisi Cuisine in South Brisbane was very enjoyable, and fruitful. I still consider them the ultimate cheese destination in town: even though plenty of other people have plenty of good cheese, these guys have PLENTY of GOOD cheese. 177 varieties, in fact. Read the sign.

We came away with some imported French soft tangy goats' cheese, the kind with the soft ash coating. Delicious.
Also, I stocked up on the proper '00' flour you need for pizza and pasta. The elder Mr Pennisi went out the back for me and shovelled a few kilos into a bag... and I used it last night for mushroom pizza. Excellent.

The 'meat trough', as we call it, was chockers with strange salted and cured meats. I ended up taking home a fermented Borgo Smallgoods casalingo salami. The funky wet-dog scent of it took me back to French loungerooms, and the tray of pre-dinner nibbles. There'd always be some olives, a bit of firm cheese and some tiny slices of this kind of air-dried raw salami. Ah, the memories.

Popped a bit of the salami on last night's pizza, and it went down well. Very salty, very meaty. (Pork, beef, salt, dextrose, wine, spices, antioxidant, sodium nitrate, starter culture).

The other cool thing about Pennisi is that they have a massive kosher selection for all those times when you're just dying to recreate a Seinfeld moment in suburban Brisbane and tuck into a big bowl of matzo ball soup.

They also sort all their produce according to country of origin. As you walk down the aisles you see all these little European flags, separating Finland from Portugal and Spain from Lebanon. A culinary trip around the continent in ten minutes.