Artisanal Culatello

Prosciutto, Abbrusezze and other Salami, homemade mozzarella - I learned about these in the first Salumeria I'd seen during college in the Hudson Valley. In the fashion of the best shopkeepers, my new favorite shop greeted customers by name and offered as much education about the products as we wanted.

Liberal samples helped anchor the lessons on my tongue and in my memory. I recall going home on school breaks with Asiago, Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese or sausages and introducing my family to these wonderful new treats.

Soon, the hints became a familiar feature of the pre-trip discussions. Date and time of arrival? Flight number or train schedule? Followed by the oh-so-subtle: "By the way, what was the name of that cheese you brought home last time?" Or, "You know I really liked that sausage you brought home last break."

Norcini: Meat, meet Salt; Salt, meet Meat.

Salami - the general term for cured, spiced pork and beef products, comes from the Italian world salare meaning to salt. Norcini were the traveling pork butchers. They developed the techniques using salt to cure the now-familiar Italian pork products. Like other civilized peoples, Italians understood the importance of proper food preservation long before "refrigerators" or even "ice-boxes" existed. (Please tell me someone else out there knows what an ice-box was!)

Culatello, like its better known cousin Prosciutto, hails from the Parma region of Italy. Mark Kurlansky devotes a whole chapter, "Two Ports and the Prosciutto in Between" on this important region in his authoritative and interesting book "Salt: A World History." It actually begins from the same part of the pig, but Culatello is the choicest part of the cut. After it's boned and cured, the result is a rosy, creamy and slightly sweeter ham than Prosciutto. It is something so unique devotees fairly swoon when describing it.

During the making of Culatello, the pork goes through several stages including:

• drying (they lose half their weight in the process),
• salting and spicing (including the addition of wine, how can we go wrong?),
• and ripening in a pig's bladder (okay, not so romantic)
• the whole affair is pulled taut into a pear shape, eliminating air from the product itself. (Air inside:bad; air outside:good)

In the original method, air-curing was achieved by hanging the culatelli first in a dry room, then subsequently in a cellar which provided the proper balance of humidity and cool temperature for the final cure. The entire process takes between 10 and 14 months. The Po Valley in Emilia-Romagna was ideal for this curing process, lying as it does between the Italian Alps and Tuscany, with the Po river running through it right to the Adriatic sea.

E' un peccato! (It's a shame)

Sadly, in an increasingly familiar dance, artisans and food safety inspectors negotiate the demands of old world traditions and new world regulations. Even the Italians have begun the march toward "modernization" and "sanitary methods." What madness is this?

Culatello is now produced in the US by methods that mirror old world techniques by none other than the father of Mario Batali, Armandino Batali As a former engineer, he seems to be able to straddle both modern regulatory demands and genuine artisanal methods.

Like many traditionally air-cured and salt-cured products, Culatello produced here in the US are now subjected to a "kill" stage (and doesn't that just say it all?) During production this "kill" stage ensures that all potentially harmful bacteria are eradicated. This may be accomplished by irradiation (O, joy); freezing; heating; or the addition of artificial ingredients (mm, mm good.)

Eradication of bacteria can also be accomplished by traditional methods. These apparently worked fine for hundreds of years, since we don't learn about a lost culture called "Italians" in our Ancient Civilizations class; mysteriously vanished from the face of the earth (undoubtedly from pork products gone bad.) But then, who am I to argue with the USDA? I don't have $100,000 to drop on laboratory tests and legal fees to prove the point, as did Marc Buzzio of Salumeria Biellese in Manhattan. Dry-cured Sausages:Kissed by Air, Never by Fire.

Artisanal producers insist these new requirements fundamentally change the final product. I cannot imagine they would not. Fans of this delicacy insist it is to be enjoyed shaved thin with grissini or bread and the best butter or olive oil available. No figs, no melon.

Mille Grazie, Salumieri!

• For more on Prosciutto, see Prosciutto Primer.
• Read about Americans cured ham in Artisanal Hickory Smoked Ham.

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