Try This by Danyelle Freeman

Author:Danyelle Freeman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2011-06-01T04:00:00+00:00

TASTY MORSEL

Ever wonder where bologna—commonly known as “baloney”—gets its name? Baloney’s Italian cousin, mortadella, a pork sausage larded with cubes of fat, originated in Bologna, Italy. Unlike mortadella, which contains thick chunks of fat, U.S. regulations require American bologna to be finely ground without any visible fat. Instead baloney is typically made of fully cooked and chopped chicken, beef, pork, or veal. Mortadella is cured, not cooked, and made from just pork.

Salumi refers to all Italian charcuterie, and as with the French, there’s an impressive array of succulent cured meats (traditionally pork) to sink your teeth into. Good prosciutto practically melts on your tongue. Prosciutto is salt-cured, air-dried ham, and sliced impossibly thin. These rosy ribbons, trimmed in fat, are salty-sweet and delicate. Some restaurants serve prosciutto on its own, others serve it wrapped around ripe melon. If there’s Prosciutto di Parma on the menu, I highly recommend an order. Because it’s an air-dried meat, climate matters, and Parma’s humid climate works magic on ham, producing soft, tender ribbons. If you want something a tad more robust and sturdy, there’s sopressata, dry-cured pork salami, which is coarsely pressed—not ground, like traditional salami—and chewier than typical Italian salami. While we’re on the subject, there are two types of salami: salami and salame. Salami with an i is dry, well-seasoned pork, while salame with an e is tangibly moister and less seasoned. And bresaola is salami made from air-dried, salted beef instead of pork—leaner, sweeter, and more tender than standard salami.

You could easily make a meal from all the sensational charcuterie Italy has to offer. There’s pancetta, or unsmoked, dry-cured bacon, which is often diced and added to sauce. What would carbonara or amatriciana be without guanciale (unsmoked bacon), for that matter? Speck is essentially smoked prosciutto, made from dry-cured ham that’s smoky and sweet (not salty). At Salumeria Rosi on the Upper West Side, there’s an entire menu devoted to the fine art of Italian charcuterie, with eighteen meaty options. Servers tote large wood boards, heaped with rounds of salami, fragrant ribbons of prosciutto, pancetta, speck, and mortadella, which is the fattier and tastier Italian version of American bologna. Like most salumerias, they also feature some terrific Italian cheeses to eat with charcuterie.

At most formal ristorantes, cheese not only makes an appearance in many dishes but also gets its very own course—the formaggi (the plural form of formaggio)—eaten just before dessert. Italy makes soft and hard cheeses, fresh and aged, molded blues, some made with cow’s milk or goat, others with buffalo or sheep’s milk. Each one is distinct and distinguished and can be eaten on their own, with nothing more than a little dried fruit, preserves, and some crusty bread. When you make cheeses as well as the Italians do, you want to protect their reputation. There are organizations, even laws, to protect Italy’s twenty-six most prized cheeses. Some get awarded DOC status, short for Denominazione di Origine Controllata, which translates to “Denomination of Controlled Origin.” In plain English, in

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