Welcome to 2009. Saucyman should be back to its thrice weekly posting schedule now that the holidays are behind us. To start out the calendar year Friend of Saucyman, Charles Seluzicki is continuing his epic quest to explain every kind, type and variety of sausage known to humans. Today the world of salami comes to saucyman. The great salamis of the world all have their origin in the need to preserve those portions of the meat that is not consumed at butchering time. Salt is central to this process; salami, and all salumi, derive their name from the adjectival form of the Latin sal, salsus (salted). Entrails of all sorts and, less frequently, skins are used to house the chopped and salted meat. The stunning varieties of salami- an estimated 1500 kinds in Germany alone- if charted from the softest types to the hardest describe an epic arc of innovation, terroir and trade, the seasons and necessity. Methods of production lend specific salamis their name: Katenrauchwurst derives from katen or the huts where salami hung in chimneys for long smoking or, even more simply, saucisson sec (dry) or saucisson fume (smoked.) Likewise various decorative styles of tying salami identify them, as with the German netz (latticework). Regions also commonly lend their names to many well known styles: Toscano, Genoa, Milano.
The qualities of necessity and innovation are no more evident than in hard salami. Necessity because these are the preserved meats that required the longest time to make and then to hold for periods of scarcity, innovation because the slow genesis of technique associated with the humble and utilitarian farm salami evolves into the artisanal methods we associate with great regional salami. Food historians generally agree that the latter happens sometime in the early 18th century, in the first afterglow of the explosion of the great cities of Europe in the mid-17th century. This combination of urban growth, an emerging middle class and the concurrent competition for their new spending power, provoked growth in all quarters. The art of charcuterie was subject to the same forces that drove the new merchantile society generally. Necessity would slowly give way to innovation and the concurrent need to provide standardized products of predictable quality. Imperial Rome's passion for the salamis and hams of Gaul develops into the middle class sophistications of Europe's urban centers.
The firms Salumi and Fra'Mani have been mentioned here with admiration. Their hard salamis are at once familiar and bear the unmistakeable imprint of their makers as well. Some years ago I tried oregano salami at Salumi (this does not appear to be regularly available) and was incredulous that a cured salami could retain such a vibrant herbal flavor; likewise their finnocchio, redolent enough with sweet and salty fennel to make Caesar swoon. I have been tasting my way through Fra'mani's offerings as well. The fathomless wine-reds of their Toscano glisten with fine fat. Slice it paper thin and serve it up with traditional salt-free Tuscan bread grilled to perfection. Permit their diminutive salametto picante, flavored with spicy Spanish pimenton, time for a little flamenco on your palate in between bites of sweet Spanish peppers and tangy goat cheese, drizzled with a fruity Spanish oil.
As with many foods that appear expensive at first glance, these artisan salamis are evolved, rich, complex with individual personality; they satisfy fully, with less. More, it is as if the fine white bacteria that coats many salamis, protecting them from decay, nurtured by their makers and working a chemical magic that cannot be otherwise duplicated, becomes a metaphor for something larger in life itself, something like necessity in its other guise, ineffable but a-glow with simple pride, touched with happiness. Something impossibly pure and yet completely of the world.
- Charles Seluzicki
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