In praise of cured pork products

Photos and story by Ronald Holden

Pity the pig, reviled as a filthy glutton in our language and our literature. Cooks know better.

They praise the pig, revere it as the embodiment of everything delicious. But fresh pork spoils quickly. It needs to be cooked and eaten before it decomposes, breaks down under the assault of micro-enzymes or else preserved by some means. Refrigeration slows decay, freezing kills unwanted bacteria. But man has long preserved his food in other ways as well: smoking, air drying, sweetening and, since ancient times, salting.

 (Keep your eyes on the prize: Salumi's curing fridge

Simply put, the harmful bacteria cannot live in a salty environment. But the process of salting has many variables and success takes both a scientist and an artisan.

Armandino Batali is both. After an engineering career at Boeing, he spent the first years of his retirement learning both the craft and science of curing meat. "If at first you succeed, hide your astonishment," he says.

Restaurants always want something new, says Armandino Batali. The worst offender, he says, is his own son, the larger-than-life restaurateur Mario (Iron Chef, Babbo, Esca, etc.), who relentlessly seeks innovation. Armandino, on the other hand, doesn't want to be trendy. Rigorous process control (the engineering background!) in the service of tradition. And tradition in the service of family. Today, his daughter and son-in-law do the heavy lifting for the storefront deli, Salumi, and its online marketplace, SalumiCuredMeats.com.

Seven years ago, Armandino set up a quirky promotion called "Adopt a Prosciutto." (Among the participants: an up-and-coming chef named Adam Stevenson.) This year, he launched Salumi's Salami Challenge. Surprise! Entries from as far afield as California and Colorado, 47 entries in all. Six came from home-based artisans, eight from restaurants. Grand prize winner: Adam Stevenson, now the executive chef at Earth & Ocean (now closed).

His entry, a spicy coppa, began its life almost a year ago with meat from the pork collars and necks. ("A good ratio of meat to fat," he says). It was cured with salt and sugar, spent time in Adam's humid walk-in, then got cured a second time in sea salt. Eventually, the meat was coated with chili flakes and packed into sausage casings, then hung to dry for four to six months. (No 28-day-wonders here.)

Above: Armandino Batali

One hundred pounds of meat can make 50 salamis, for example, but a 20-pound pork leg only yields four or five pieces of coppa. And coppa's (relatively) easy. Chorizo's complex. Finocchioni's complex (when you can get the fennel pollen that provides the essential seasoning). There's a lot of chemistry (checking pH levels and humidity, to determine stability and edibility). Green and blue molds are no-nos; white mold is okay.

Stevenson's pigs are local, raised at Skagit River Ranch in Sedro Woolley, where the livestock are pasture-fed on nuts, grass and grain. Salumi's mail-order business requires a steady supply of pigs, as many as 100 a week, so the company now taps into a network of farmers who subscribe to the ideals of the Slow Food movement, in particular, Newman Farm in Missouri. Salumi prizes animals with more heavily marbled fat, juicier and richer tasting than most pork. The Berkshire pigs that he buys fit the bill for Salumi's dry curing processes and produce a better texture, flavor and consistency.

Adam Stevenson with coppa

Back at Earth & Ocean, Stevenson brings out a coppa from his award-winning batch (he made about a dozen sausages so there are still a few samples) and places it on the cutting board. It glistens with a sheen of olive oil and chili flakes. With a sharp, sharp knife, he cuts thin, thin slices. We smack our lips. There is, first, the irresistible taste of salt, of pork fat. Then there is a bit of heat from the chili and the satisfying sweetness of the meat itself. The intensity of flavor, the complexity of tastes, is like a sip of fine wine: multiple, interlocked sensations on the tongue and the nose. Mmmm. Praise the pig indeed!

Nov/Dec 2007