Angela
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Beyond individual taste, much depends on the type of recipe and how much you want to be faithful to traditions. In my home, for recipes with puff pastry, tagliatelle, cappelletti or passatelli in broth and obviously for risottos, Parmesan (or Grana Padano in second choice) is a must.
For other recipes, however, Parmesan or Grana may not be suitable (or not sufficient on their own). For example, the "pizzoccheri" of Valtellina, which are a specialty from northern Lombardy (boiled buckwheat scraps, then cooked and seasoned with garlic, butter, cabbage and potatoes) require a creaming with Parmesan cheese but mostly from Casera, a semi-fat cheese typical of the valley, semi-cooked and semi-hard, of cow's milk. (It is also used for the "sciatt" dough, precisely small balls of Casera cheese battered with 00 flour and again with buckwheat, then fried in a pan.)
If you cross the northern Apennines, as you go through central Italy, especially in the interior of Tuscany, Marche, Umbria and Lazio, Grana and Parmigiano progressively give way to Pecorino cheese (of which there are a thousand variations, more or less seasoned, more or less tasty and spicy) which is actually required to cook decently pasta recipes like Carbonara, Gricia, Amatriciana.
There are also first courses that may require less obvious combinations, but very successful. The so-called "smoke and champagne" risotto was conceived probably about 50 years ago in Milan by chef Pino Capogna and was made known to the public by Ugo Tognazzi in his famous book. It combines northern and southern culinary traditions: in fact it's a parmesan risotto, simmered with champagne (or more modest sparkling wine / brut), in whose creaming, in addition to the Parmesan cheese, there must be some diced smoked Provola, a small milk cheese vaccine, of spun paste exposed to the smoke of straw, which is a dairy specialty originating from Campania
That's a great explanation so that people understand that Italian cooking is not about just one cheese.
As I said above, probably partly because the Lunigiana is suspended between Emilia and Toscana, for things like fillings for pasta or stuffed veal breast, even stuffed mushrooms, my mother always mixed Parmigiano and our own Pecorino. I do think it also had to do with her sense of taste, as she thought it just tasted better, as do I. On the pasta itself, though, it was always grated Parmigiano.
I'm also one of those people who love recipes like Carbonara, Gricia and Amatriciana, and I think they'd be spoiled if you didn't use Pecorino. Also, one of my favorites is cacio e pepe...such a deceptively simple recipe but so difficult to do correctly...absolutely no cream, yet look how creamy and silky.
Maybe you have to grow up with more strongly flavored cheeses to appreciate them. I've heard Americans call some French and Italian cheeses "stinky", or Pecorino "funky". I call them delicious.