Italian Food #3: Salami

Pork has a prominent role in the Italian diet, especially in northern and central regions. There is a saying that goes "Del maiale non si butta via niente" - Of a pig, nothing goes wasted, more or less. While a lot of pork is eaten fresh, long-term conservation of meat has always been a paramount issue. Salting is gthe obvious answer, and in Italian the collective word for all salted pork products is salumi - you can see some of those in the picture. This is the plural of salume, that refers to one single (unspecified) product. For some unfathomable reasons, the word became "salami" in English; why this is funny will be explained shortly.

Salumi can be either cooked or raw (cured), and cooked ones are generally regarded as second-rate, even if that's not always the case. Some are made from whole chunks of meat, while for others meat is minced, mixed with spices and salt and packed inside a gut. There are probably hundreds of different varieties, so this article will necessarily cover only the basics.

Prosciutto (ham) is made from a whole pig thigh on the bone with rind on, salted and cellar-cured (well, nowadays maturing is performed in rooms with a controlled atmosphere and temperature) for at least a few months. Parma Ham (Prosciutto di Parma) is one of the most well known; it is meaty and mild-flavoured, almost sweet. By contrast, Tuscan ham is much stronger and saltier - but Tuscan bread uses no additional salt. Ham can also be cooked - steamed or roasted. Sometimes this is done with poor quality meat that would not withstand the curing process, but when quality raw ham is used as feedstock, the result is very good. On the other hand, pig's shoulder (spalla) is generally cooked, and delicious with the fried pasty (torta fritta) typical of the Emilia region.

Among estimators, the best salume is thought to be culatello. It is made in the Parma area from the very rump of pig, packed inside bladder and matured for at least 12 months. Culatello is mentioned and praised in the chronichles since the 14th century or so.

Pork belly (pancetta) is roughly the same cut of streaky bacon - but better, eh. Smoked (affumicata) pancetta is usually traded in slabs with its rind on; the unsmoked variety is rolled up instead (the light brown cylinders in the picture). I tried a special pancetta: boiled in Barolo wine before being rolled up with salt and spices and cured. Delicious does not even begin to describe it. Speck is a variety of pancetta affumicata typical of the Trentino region: it is more deeply smoked, and its top side covered with a mixture of salt and spices based on crushed peppercorns, giving it a strong, smoky and spicy taste.

Very hard to find out of Italy, there are two more obscure salumi: gota (or guanciale) and gola: they are made from the cheek or throat, salted and aged. Guanciale is the fundamental ingredient for the amatriciana sauce (with garlic, onion, tomato, chilli and olive oil) typical of Lazio in central Italy. The people of the village of Colonnata in the Apuane Alps take slabs of lard, rub them with sea salt and spices and put them to mature in holes dug into the marble rock of the area. The resulting Lardo di Colonnata is another sublime product: wood-oven baked pizza with melting lardo on top is almost worth killing for.

Salame (plural salami - notice the subtle linguistical issue?) is made of mince meat, salt and pepper seasoned inside a gut. Though second-choice meat can be used, the best salami are made mincing together good lean meat and a measured amount of quality fat. Salami often sport a thin layer of mould on the outside, but that is perfectly harmless. Some people use a mix of pork fat and wild boar meat for their homemade salami, while in Tuscany fennel seeds are added to the meat to make finocchiona. In the south, crushed chillies are added (up to 50% of the total...) to make those small and hot salami known in the Anglosphere as pepperoni (peperoncino is the Italian for chilli, anyway). Italian sausages (salsiccie) are made with the same quality mince used for salami, but a little more salty and not cured (though one can mature sausages into small salami); some recipes also put a little of wine, spices or chopped vegetables in the mince.

Ah, mortadella! It is a poorer cousin of the high-brow salami, but still very good. It is made of a fine mince of meat mixed with bigger chunks of fat, the ubiqitous

salt and pepper and whole pistachio nuts - in some versions the pistachios are crushed, making the whole thing greenish. The mix is packed into plastic bags and then steamed; a nice thing about mortadella is that it comes in many sizes, from a handy half kilo to 300 kg monsters - really.

Remember, of a pig nothing goes wasted. So also parts like brains, gristle, feet and even blood find their way to the table. Zampone is the skin of a pig foot, stuffed with a salami-like filling and then boiled. It's a typical Christmas and New Year food, together with lentils - in a casserole with lentils if you dare (not to be confused with cotechino, which is a gut filled with a mince of rinds and other low-quality parts) Only people very into pork eat zampone's rind. Brains etc. are boiled together and, in Emilia, pressed into rectangular forms to make cicciolata or soprassata; despite their origins these salami are good as well. In Tuscany, pig's blood and fat chunks are mixed together and cured inside a gut - I don't remember the name of this thing now, tho.

Bresaola, on the other hand, is salted and matured fillet beef, but still a salume at large. I've heard of something called tetun, which is made of cow's breasts, slice, salted and pressed into a cylindrical form. Well, of all the things I listed, this is the only one that doesn't really tempt me.