The Oldways Table Excerpts: Stories, Lessons, and Recipes from Each Chapter

Chapter 8: Meat
Lou Di Palo on Italian Specialty Meats

We've spent many happy days, weeks, and months in Italy over the last fifteen years, and we've found -- from north to south and especially in Emilia-Romagna -- that wonderful cured meats are an important part of the cuisine in every region.

Few people understand the localized production of cured meats at which Italian artisans excel better or more firsthand than Lou DiPalo. His famous shop in Manhattan's Little Italy has brought in the best of Italian meats and other specialty products for four generations, often breaking new ground by introducing foods that haven't been sold here before.

Lou makes a wonderful point in his last paragraph. We have not necessarily lost the "old ways" with the advances in food science and technology, he argues, but are now able "to extend the season" so that we can enjoy the fruits of the old ways for more months of the year. Widespread refrigeration, better understandings of fermentation and oxidation, the workings of the bacteria that make cheese, quality-testing sensors, and a host of other scientific and technical wonder have made the difference.

The heart of this corner of the meat industry is the passion of the people who produce it. Italians desire to give you the best product they can; for example, they take pride in the variety of pigs they have in each of their country's regions.

It all started with the Romans. In and around Tuscany and Umbria there were many wild pigs. Prosciutto and other cured meats were made from them, but little by little, the boars were fed a certain diet and eventually domesticated. For example, today Sicily has the black pig; Parma has the black parmigiana pig, which is extremely rare because in the 1960s the breed was hit with swine flu and it became nearly extinct. Tuscany has the brown and white Sienese pig.

Not very many years ago, wealth was measured by how many animals a family owned. The pig, in particular, is an all-giving animal -- everything was used, from the head to the tail -- and it was a valuable factor in the economy of rural families.

In Italy meat is eaten in modest portions when it served as a course on its own. It is also used imaginatively with other ingredients in pasta, rice, soup, or appetizers. Probably the most important meats on the Italian table are salumi, air- and salt-cured or spiced and precooked hams, and salame, smoked meats and such.

Cured meats, salumi, are made differently in the various regions. For example, a prosciutto produced in Friuli has a different flavor, texture, and look than one from Emilia-Romagna or Tuscany; a capocallo produced in Calabria differs from one produced, for example, in Puglia. Some sausages are eaten fresh and others are dried, which intensifies their flavor. Once sliced, salumi are called affettati, which essentially means "cold cuts."

No doubt the most prized of the affettati is prosciutto crudo, meaning uncooked ham, which has become popular in America. With its popularity, however, has come a great deal of misunderstanding about the best ways to serve and to eat it. It's a shame to do anything more to the finest prosciutto crudo than to eat it raw, sliced as thin as paper (although not so thin that it falls apart), accompanied perhaps only by good grissini, Italian breadsticks. Despite the practice that persists of serving prosciutto crudo with figs or melon, it is best eaten on its own without sweet distractions. In the Parma and San Daniele areas where the best prosciutto in the world is made, asking for melon with your prosciutto would be the equivalent of asking for peaches to be served with your steak in Texas.

In Italy, the bone is seldom removed from the prosciutto because it keeps the ham moist and gives it flavor. Prosciutti that are exported to America are boned, which is convenient for slicing by machine. Skillful cutting with a knife results in slices that Italian culinary experts believe delivers more flavor, but this is rarely done in the twenty-first century. most slicing, whether in salumerie (shops selling cured meats) or restaurants, is done by machine today. The preferred method is a specialized hand-driven slicer because the blade of an electric slicer generates heat, causing the texture of the paper-thin slices to change, even if slightly.

Cooking prosciutto crudo destroys its silky texture and remarkable delicacy, so it makes sense to use the ends for that purpose, which your prosciutto purveyor should be happy to sell to you for a discount. Prosciutto should be sliced thicker when used in cooking than when eaten raw.

Before there was refrigeration people had to find ways of preserving meat throughout the year. In and around the Mediterranean -- in Italy, Spain, and Portugal -- the method was to preserve through salting and air-curing. In Austria and Germany, where the climate is colder, it was through smoking. Somewhere in the middle, there was a bridge between the two, like around Alto Adige and Trentino in the Italian northeast, where Speck is made by a combination of curing through smoke, salt, and air. All this happened by accident, like everything else. In the col weather, people had fire going constantly. They noticed that if meat was left in the fire room, it would be preserved. And they found that if they smoked it first they didn't have to cure it for so long.

The slaughtering process needed to begin in the winter, usually December, when the temperature was cold. By mid-June, the product was cured enough to withstand the heat of the summer. They used to cure in environments where there was clean, fresh air and fresh, flowing breezes. If there were no breezes many unwanted things would happen because air would help to evaporate the moisture and discourage bugs from setting on the meat. That's why certain areas are famous for certain products. Langhirano, a suburb of Parma in the region of Emilia-Romagna, and San Daniele situated midway between the Adriatic Sea and the Italian Alps in the region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, are renowned for their prosciutto crudo.

Pork is the treasured meat for curing, but beef, donkey, goat, and goose are also used.

Curing meat is truly an art form in Italy. Even though temperature can be controlled now, the same traditions for making prosciutto and other artisanal food products continue, but with science now added. The old way is great but the new way also can be great because, in actuality, you now get a consistent product that will always be good. It used to be that people would say, "That was a good year" or "That was not a good year" for wine or prosciutto, or whatever. Now every year is a great year because they added science to the art.

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