On Sat, 5 Jul 2014 10:49:29 +1000, "DavidW" > wrote:

>Janet Bostwick wrote:
>> On Fri, 4 Jul 2014 14:06:55 +1000, "DavidW" > wrote:
>>
>> snip
>>>
>>> No, it takes 4-5 minutes to grate enough hard parmesan for one serve
>>> with my current grater (for me, 20-25 grams). Add more time as the
>>> piece gets smaller.
>>>
>> snip
>>
>> You must be doing something wrong or the cheese you have is an old,
>> hard, dried out brick. I use a hand-held microplane. It is labeled
>> 'fine.' It grates finer than I would like, but I love the results
>> when I am zesting citrus. I could get an additional microplane, but
>> why bother? Anyway, get a new device that is still sharp or don't
>> store such a large block of cheese that it dries out.
>
>I use the second-finest part of a plain box grater (it has small holes pushed
>out from the inside, and you grate on the ragged edges). It produces a powder
>(fine, but not super-fine like the deli). Parmesan is a hard cheese, so you
>only get a thin layer of dust per stroke. That's why it takes so long to get 20
>grams.

If the parmesan you're using is so hard all you get is powder when you
grate it then it's crappy stale cheese... you'd do much better buying
the dust in that shiney green TP tube.