All through the ages, January has never been the month of diets and cleanses, at least not in Italy. There were no concerns about being fit or losing weight. Rather, the biggest concern was to keep the family fed, and warm –no one would have thought to deprive their body of energies in such a cold month, and in fact, January was about the exact opposite of dieting.
January was (and to some extent still is)
the month of pork. And us ladies at
Italian Table Talk couldn't miss such a great occasion to talk about such an important part of the Italian food culture –that is
pork and, more in general,
the art of curing meat. A tradition and an art which is centuries old and embraces the whole country, differing once again from region to region and gifting us with an extremely wide variety of types and styles of
salumi. So, before we proceed any further, let me introduce the themes of today's episode:
Emiko digs into the history of one of the most famous Tuscan salumi,
lardo di Colonnata;
Giulia discovers a(nother) traditional Tuscan
salume,
buristo, and makes some killer fried eggs with it; and
Jasmine creates a fantastic
kosher version of the famous Roman pasta dish,
amatriciana –which we will talk a bit about later 🙂
Owning one pig or more was in use amongst peasant families of all regions. As an animal, pig was particularly convenient for the numerous family groups living in the country and working in the fields: it could be fed about anything; it didn't need much care; and it could be eaten and used from nose to tail. It was what we could call
a good investment.
Pigs were traditionally slaughtered in the could months of the year, namely from December to mid February, with a peak in January, after Christmas time. The reason was mainly practical: all the operations to kill and handle the fresh meat needed to be done at low temperature. At a time when refrigeration wasn't available, this meant doing it in winter. In addition, the freshly cured meet would benefit from the cold for both drying and preserving.
Not all the cuts were turned into cured meat. In fact, some were eaten straight away –braised, fried, roasted etc. However, curing (and therefore preserving) most parts of the pig meant having enough of a supply of meat (fat, protein and energy) for the whole family for the rest of the year. A little at a time, it goes without saying, and wasting nothing, not even blood, with which a sausage (
sanguinaccio) was made.
Most of cured meats in Italy were processed through salting and adding spices. Depending on the cut and quality of the meat (lean to fat meat ratio), different techniques were used. Some parts were ground and put into a casing to make
salami or sausages. Others were handled as a whole, like the belly (
pancetta), the leg (
prosciutto), the gluteus (
culatello), the neck (
coppa or
capocollo), the cheek (guanciale) etc. Throughout the centuries, some areas of Italy became famous for specific types of cured meat because of the particular set of skills in handling specific cuts, or because a particularly successful recipe was created to make salame. Some of these products are still made more or less in the same way they used to, and many of them have also earned the PDO certification.
Although the cured meat I am going to focus on next doesn't belong directly to my food heritage, it is a true gem of Italian
norcineria which deserves to be brought to footlight and that I always wanted to share on these pages:
guanciale. Typical of Central and Southern Italy,
guanciale is made from the cheek of the pig, a cut that is mainly made of fat, with only one or two thin stripes of lean muscle in it. The composition of the fat is different from the fat found in the belly or in the back of the pig, as it is more tough and it has more intense, flavorsome characteristics. To make
guanciale, the triangular cut of meat between the cheek and the throat is selected, dry-salted and hanged for up to five days. After that, spices and herbs such as black pepper, chili pepper, garlic and rosemary are rubbed externally. Guanciale is then partially smoked on wood fire and then cured up to two-three months in a cold and humid environment.
