Salami Emiliano & Strolghino Salami

Italian Salami Emiliano:
Before you even realise it, a conversation about salami in Italy takes you on a journey the length and breadth of the entire country. There's salami from Milan, Cremona, Piacenza, Piedmont, Felino (a town in the Parma province famous for its salami), Tuscany, Naples and Calabria, sometimes called sausage or soppressa, and we could go on and on.

The jewel in the country's crown, it is generally made with pork and this is the fun part: Historically, farmers mincing the meat, expertly mixing up lean and fatty parts with salt then made up their own recipes adding all the very best that the land had to offer. This is why, in Italy, every salami is different. Some contain pepper, salt and little else (designed to give full expression to the pork itself) and those which surprise us with a touch of garlic, spicy chilli, wine or fennel seeds or other with a touch of wild boar, goose, beef or venison.

Our salami is an ode to simplicity because in Emilia we are convinced that when the ingredients are good all that is required is just a pinch of something else: pure pork meat, salt, flavours and a few selected spices. The meat is minced, seasoned and stuffed into elongated intestine sacs. It is then left to age for around 70-80 days in damp, temperature-controlled rooms where all its flavours come out.

The perfect matching? Its top quality ingredients mean that it is best tasted simply with two slices of bread or with other local cured meats (it always features on mixed cold cut platters in taver) or with a few Parmigiano Reggiano shards.

Strolghino salami:
Once upon a time there were no fridges or avant-garde technology and the production of fine charcuterie was no mean feat. Once the meat had been minced, a number of things could go wrong. The seasons might be too hot or too dry or too wet. Sometimes months of work could be ruined by pure bad luck.

So pigs were butchered in winter when the cold protected the meat, then everyone prayed to God that everything would go well because that pig represented sacrifice, both in terms of money and hard work. Some chose to make salami and ham and others, who lived in the right towns, were more willing to take a risk and opted to make Culatello. Strolghino was made with the leftovers (a strange word to use for valuable pork thigh). The name speaks volumes of the fears and uncertainties of a task which is still subject to the vagaries of the seasons and of fate. There is nothing accidental about the fact that, in Italian, the archaic verb 'strologare' means to guess, to prophesy, read the stars and the omens, as a fortune teller does. Strolghino, a humble meat because it is made with the pieces cut off Culatello, is a small offering to the fates.

The meat (lean, in contrast to other cured meats) is minced and seasoned and then stuffed into soft intestine casing and cured for a relatively brief period.

It is light and delicate in flavour. Try it with home-made bread and if you wish to serve with cheese, go for the unmistakeable Parmigiano Reggiano.