I never used to give much attention to salami. It was just another sausage
that filled up space on supermarket shelves and occasionally hung around in
Italian butcher shops, but it was always either too salty, too greasy, or just
too boring. Then I met Paul Bertolli, and he changed my life. We published a
short spot on Paul's company,
Fra'
Mani, in last October's issue, about how they're making sausage with all
the right ingredients in all the right ways. But the little space on the page
didn't give these huge flavors the justice they deserve. After having tasted
the good stuff, nothing else compares. This week, I tasted two different
mass-marketed salamis: a kosher beef version from
Daniel's Kosher
Charcuterie, and a Chianti wine salami from
Volpi. Not
surprisingly, they were each either too salty, too greasy, or just too boring.
Cased in plastic and bright pink with nitrates, they are everything that's not
good about salami and are very much like 99 percent of all American dry cured
charcuterie…boring. If you've got a taste for the good stuff or want to
learn what the good stuff really tastes like, order up some of Bertoli's
natural-cased gold. His
Salametto Trio is a perfect place to start.
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