Let them eat pig (fat)

Let them eat pig (fat)

Have you ever wondered what it feels like to massage pig fat? Does the idea of ribbons of pig fat on pieces of toasted bread make your mouth water? Do you wake up in the morning wondering how you will choose to feed your pig cravings each day? Or is

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Thu 02 Feb 2012 1:00 AM

Have you ever
wondered what it feels like to massage pig fat? Does the idea of ribbons of pig
fat on pieces of toasted bread make your mouth water? Do you wake up in the
morning wondering how you will choose to feed your pig cravings each day? Or is
that just me? Forget the bacon that you miss from home, or pork scratchings,
Lardo di Colonnata is pig heaven and January and February are the months to
prepare it.

 

 

Colonnata is
a small hamlet at the foothills of the Apuan Alps on the Tuscan coast heading
up toward Liguria and Cinque Terre, situated in the municipality of Carrara,
famous for its marble and, well, its pig fat. To be more precise, its
pearly-pinky-rose-coloured salt-and spice-cured pork back fat. This is how you
put it all together: take a conca di
marmo di Carrara, a beautifully hollowed-out piece of Carrara marble, put
some tasty pork back fat into it to age and you’ll have the most famous pig fat
in the world. In fact, Lardo di Colonnata, which the locals have been making
for around 3,000 years, is so famous that in 2003 it was classified as a
protected local speciality: Lardo di
Colonnata IGP (Indicazione Geografica Protetta; ‘Protected Geographical
Indication’). It needs to be at least one inch thick (2.5cm), though it is much
better at 6cm, and this lardo should
be aged for at least 6 months, but will be even better if aged for 10.

 

Lardo was the food of the
local cavatori, the marble miners. Their classic staple was a giant panino
stuck together with sliced tomato and beautiful, richly fragrant ribbons of
spiced and aged lard, all washed down with a fiasco of red wine. This
high-energy food helped to give them the energy to scavare il marmo, a heavy and hard job. They would sometimes stay
down the marble tunnels for days at a time, chipping out great slabs and
columns of marble for many of the famous buildings of the Roman Empire and,
later, even more precious pieces for Michelangelo to choose for his statues.

 

Every time I
go to Rome and see the public offices and many palazzos made with thousands of
big slabs of Carrara marble mined on the energy of lardo, I imagine how I would need only one big white brick to
hollow out to produce some fine lardo for myself. However, for now I make do with the poorer method of a simple
modern kitchen, which I share with you here.

 

 

RECIPE

LARDO DI
COLONNATA

3 pieces of lardo

Sale grosso
(rock salt)

Pepe nero in grani (whole black
peppercorns)

Cinnamon
sticks

Star anise

Whole
coriander seeds

Oregano

Bay leaves

 

Method

 

The lardo or lardello or grasso duro di
schiena is the back fat of the pig, which you need big chunks of with the
skin still on one side. If you can find some lardo from a pig that has been freshly slaughtered, a piece of
around 6cm thick would be ideal. I like to do three pieces at a time, in
rectangles of around 20cm by 15cm.

 

Rub the whole
of the inside of the conca di marmo with a clove of garlic cut in two. If, like me, you are not lucky enough to own
a beautiful piece of marble, make do with a clean, sturdy, plastic container a
little larger than the lardo slabs
and tall enough to fit the three pieces stacked on top of each other.

 

Now prepare
the salt and spice mix: take copious amounts of sale grosso, rock salt, and freshly ground black pepper, using ten
parts salt to one part pepper. Don’t be tempted to buy commercially ground
pepper as it is usually ground too fine and lacks the freshness needed to add
flavour to the lard. In a pestle and mortar grind, add the spices: cinnamon,
coriander, star anise, origano; now
tear in a few leaves of bay and add them to them spices. Mix all together and
rub into the lard on all sides except for the skin side. Now at the bottom of
the container put a bed of 5cm of salt and spice mix, then one piece of lard
followed by 5cm of spice mix and another piece of lard, and so forth, until all
the lard is in and covered. As you place the pieces of lard inside the container,
put on some pressure. Then move the container to the fridge, adding some weight
on top of the stack for more pressure.

 

Check your lardo each day for three days and tip
off some of the run-off liquid created by the pressure and the salt; re-seal well.
Now comes the hard bit: leave covered and cool in the fridge for six months.
During this time the fragrances of the herbs and spices penetrate delicately
into the flavour of the lardo. It
firms up somewhat through the ageing process and a creamier, softer fat is
created, the best quality of which has a slight pink hue.

 

I prefer to
eat my lardo simply sliced into thin
ribbons and placed on warm toasted bread, or even wrapped around fresh prawns
before sautéing them with a little white wine or bubbles, salt and pepper.

 

Wine match

If I am
eating lardo in the winter, I like to
match the prawns wrapped in lard with somw nice bubbles like Marchesi Antinori
Nature, which I also use to finish off the cooking of the prawns. In summer, I
like to eat it simply sliced into ribbons on some toasted pane integrale, whole-grain bread, with a well-chilled rosato wine,
like Scalabrone Bolgheri Rosato DOC.

 

 

 

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