Never underestimate how local such foods still are in many parts of Italy – even though you might see a selection from every region in an Italian deli in London. In Bologna, for example, they make the famous mortadella, the biggest of Italian sausages, which is steamed or poached, rather than cured, and has a texture so fine it is almost a paste. It is made with pork, but sometimes with beef added, together with spices, and often pistachio nuts, coriander seeds, wine and sugar. I remember talking to a guy I met in the army, about how we used to go into Bologna and have a focaccia with mortadella, and he said he had never had mortadella, because he came from Napoli.
Salami really began its life as the food of the poor. The lean cuts of the animal would be sold to the rich, and whatever was left over would go into salami, along with whatever herbs and spices you had locally. Originally, everything would have been chopped by hand, and in many places it still is. In Toscana, for example, the typical coppa di testa is made with practically the whole head of the pig: the tongue, cheek, skin, ear, everything.
To make salami, you need lard, or hard fat, which is cut into pieces, like nuggets of white marble, which won’t go rancid in the way that soft fat can; and the best salame achieve the perfect balance between meat and fat. The mixture is forced into the casing or skin of the salami (i budelli), which is traditionally the intestine of the pig, but may be synthetic. Once the salami has been forced into its ‘sock’ or skin, and tied with string, it is hung up in carefully controlled conditions for 2-4 months, to cure and dry. During this time it forms le muffe (mould), which should be uniform all the way over the surface of the salami (and all the same colour), leaving no gaps to allow air in, as this could cause the salami to become rancid. This ageing process, which contributes so much to the final character, is called ‘la stagionatura’.
For a simple family lunch, I like nothing better than a good salami with some bread, a little salad and some balsamic onions or other sottaceti (pickled vegetables). You can serve salami at dinner and then that is one course you don’t have to think about. I would always choose salami over prosciutto, perhaps because I still have a special memory of going up into the mountains with my granddad, when I was small. We would buy some bread, and a salami cacciatore – these are the little ones from my region of Lombardia that are not much bigger than a plump sausage and that hunters would carry in their rucksacks – which he would slice with his knife; and it was the best taste out in the open air. On a picnic, even now, I can’t think of anything better.
If you were to ask me now which is my favourite salami, I guess I would have to say salami di felino, the long one made in Emilia Romagna, which is a very straightforward salami, the first one you are given to have in your panino when you are very young. It is made with coarsely minced pork, seasoned only with salt and peppercorns and, usually, no garlic, so it is quite sweet-tasting and still moist in the middle. But there is no salami I don’t like; and there are so many to choose from, varying in texture: some are soft; some are like dry sticks of meat. In the South, you often find less salty salame, made with more chilli; peppercorns and, occasionally, light smoking are favoured in the North. In Toscana, they like to flavour their salame with fennel seeds (salame toscano finocchiona or sbriciolona).
They say this salami was first made by the farmers in order to sell their wine that wasn’t so good. The fennel seeds have an anaesthetic power over your taste buds, so when you came to the farm to taste the wine, they would first offer you a slice of the finocchiona, so that the flavour would disguise the poor quality of the wine.
On holiday in Calabria I tasted ’nduja from Spilinga for the first time (strangely, the name ’nduja comes from the French andouille). It is a soft (morbido), almost spreadable, salami: a mixture of pork and offal, chopped with a knife, with a lot of chilli, which goes inside the pig’s intestine and is lightly smoked over wood, then matured. You spoon it out and mix it with some pasta, or have it on bread. My son Jack would come back from swimming in the sea all afternoon and tuck into it as if it was peanut butter or chocolate spread.
Prosciutto crudo is famous all over the world and the word may be an amalgamation of two Latin verbs, one meaning to burn, the other to draw out or strip (as in drawing out the moisture of the meat). Of course the most well known is prosciutto di Parma (Parma ham), which – like Parmesan cheese, from the same region of Italy – has travelled the world. Just as you could roll your wheel of cheese on to a boat, you could pack your ham and a knife in your knapsack and go off on your travels.
Meat has been cured since ancient times, so why is Parma so important? Partly because there was an abundance of salt passing through the area from the trading port of Venezia as far back as Roman times, and partly because the dry, aromatic breezes that circulate through the Appeninos create the perfect environment for curing hams. Italian pigs, salt, air and time – those four ingredients, they say, give Parma ham its special sweetness (no sugar, spices, water, nitrites or smoking are allowed).
Prosciutto di Parma has become so synonymous with prosciutto crudo, I often think people don’t even know that there are many, many more styles of cured ham being made in regions around Italy. All the time at Locanda, we are being brought new ones to taste, from small producers reviving old methods, and I am always fascinated by the subtle differences that come not only from the various breeds of pigs that are used, but from the diet of the animals, and the environment and conditions in which the ham is cured and dried.
After the Second World War, when there was not enough food for everyone, many people went into intensive breeding of pigs, but now there is much more attention being paid to traditional breeds, and the way they are raised. Remember, we are talking about raw cured ham, so the quality of the meat is the most important thing. What you put in at the beginning, you get back at the end.
Parma’s fame has also brought it close to a disaster, because until the rules tightened to protect the product, who was going to say: ‘No, we can only produce 150,000 hams a year,’ when the demand around the world might be 150 million? It was easier to bring in pigs from outside the region – even from Poland and Romania – and have them slaughtered and cured in the locality, in order to get the Parma certification. Imagine vans of several hundred animals, banging around inside lorries, kicking each other as pigs do, and getting crushed. Of course, the first thing that would be damaged would be the legs (only the hind legs are cured to make Parma ham), so the flesh becomes soft. Why do you think prosciutto without the bone became so popular? Because, if the bone was taken out and the flesh squeezed together, it was a way of selling second quality meat, and still calling it Parma ham, so that a lorry load of pigs that left Spain worth £20,000 was now worth £40,000.
So gradually Parma ham has come under much stricter controls. Since
1970 it has been awarded a Protected Designation of Origin and production is controlled