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Salumi Success

I have been perfecting (I hope) my curing skills in the hope that I will soon be able to start making and selling salumi (that's Italian charcuterie although some may be more French than Italian, of course). I seem to be getting there. Shortly before Christmas - for some reason, at my busiest time of the year, I always need an additional project. Probably, if I don't keep going, I'll simply stop altogether - I cured a Coppa (the muscle that runs from the neck to the loin), a Lonzo (the loin) and made various salami from a basic recipe with additions: some with olives, some simply with black pepper and, best of all, a Fenocchiona which has lots of garlic and fennel. The Lonzo was cold smoked for a couple of hours. Here are the results:



My youngest son and I demolished this in a matter of minutes. He didn't get any wine to go with it but I did: Fabrizio Battaglino's Roero Riserva 2015: just about reaching perfection, this has elegant Nebbiolo character with some supporting oak providing a suitable veneer. Tannins need a little longer to integrate to bring this to its apex but, with the Coppa and Fenocchiona in particular, they provided no obstacles for me.

Comments

  1. They look very good James. I will follow with interest if you decide to make it a commercial activity. If you do, there are some good local farm shops that might be a good fit.

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  2. Thanks Ian. We've started some new salami and cured meats just a couple of weeks ago so we're just a few weeks away from going live with a new website for this side of things. Starting small, of course, but we will look at farm shops soon enough I think. We have some interesting products, in particular, lots of Piedmontese-inspired salami and venison-based products. You can tell we're enjoying ourselves with this.

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