Archive for category: salami

La Quercia – Iowa Style Artisan Salumi or Cured Meats

La Quercia – Iowa Style Artisan Salumi or Cured Meats

Like many Italian families in southern Italy, we make our own salumi from pigs raised on family land.  My grandfather would often slaughter a carefully raised pig and thereafter make wonderful cacciatore, coppa, salt pork, etc. (and today  our cousin Guiseppe continues the family tradition). Herb and Kathy Eckhouse correctly realized that the tradition and process mentioned above could be [...]

Homemade Guanciale

Homemade Guanciale

An Easy Guide To Making Guanciale (Cured Pork Jowl) at Home   The following is a guest post (on homemade guanciale)  from our friend and Scordo.com super fan Dr. K. (make sure to read all of his wonderful guest posts and recipes) . All photos courtesy of Dr. K. Charcuterie originated as means of preserving meats for extended periods. Cured meats (e.g., [...]

PizzaGaina

PizzaGaina

Pizza Gain goes by many names including Easter Pizza, Pizza Chiena, PizzaGaina, Italian Ham Pie,  Pizza Gaina, Pizza Rustica, Italian Easter Ham Pie, Stuffed Easter Bread, Pastiera, etc.    Just as there are many names for Pizza Gain there are various versions of the classic Easter dish.  For example, in provinces such as Campania (for example, the city of Naples), Easter Pie is [...]

Pane in Cassetta (Grilled or Toasted Panino) with Prosciutto di Parma, Cheese, and Pane Pugliese

Pane in Cassetta (Grilled or Toasted Panino) with Prosciutto di Parma, Cheese, and Pane Pugliese

One of the most ubiquitous panini (plural for sandwich) in all of the Italy is prosciutto and cheese.  In fact, I made so many of the aforementioned panini in Italy one summer (helping Zia Teresa in her small shop) I thought all Italians survived on prosciutto (or prosciutto cotto <steam cooked Parma ham>) and cheese alone. Italian’s fascination with panini are easily understand and well placed when [...]

A Columbus Day Weekend with Italian Cheese, Salumi, Truffle Honey, and Cherry Preserves

A Columbus Day Weekend with Italian Cheese, Salumi, Truffle Honey, and Cherry Preserves

You have to love any establishment that sells over 200,000 pounds of Italian cheese in a given week, in turn we’ve fallen deeply in love with the Pittsburgh based, Pennsylvania Macaroni Company.  The Italian food store was started in 1902 by Sicilian immigrants from Trabia and they now carry well over 5,000 Italian specialty items, including an online business that will slice [...]

Tomato, Gorgonzola, and Hot Sopressata Panino, Plus a Columbus Salame Giveaway

Tomato, Gorgonzola, and Hot Sopressata Panino, Plus a Columbus Salame Giveaway

(photo: Columbus Artisan hot sopressata sliced by hand) Peperoncini and Salumi If there’s one food item that the southern province of Calabria is famous for it would be peperoncini (or red chili peppers). Peperoncini are used in pasta dishes (Penne all’Arrabbiata, for example), cured meats and vegetables (including the trendy salumi spread, ‘Nduja), soups, and an eggplant stew dish called [...]

Sausage and Peppers

Sausage and Peppers

As Clifford A. Wright, the author of the wonderful book A Mediterranean Feast, writes: The daily consumption of fresh meat began to decline by 1550 as the population was now fully recovered from the Black Death of two centuries before, and, as a result, more land was devoted to the more labor-intensive agriculture rather than stock rearing. As fresh meat [...]

The Italian Deli and Creminelli’s Artisan Meats

The Italian Deli and Creminelli’s Artisan Meats

  (photo: left to right: Creminelli felino, sopressa,mocetta, Calabrese, Milano) The Working Life and the Italian Deli I’ve held many odd jobs as a young lad including garbage man, janitor, landscaper, handy man assistant, electrician’s assistant, travel agent, HTML editor, maintenance man at a women’s clothing shop, and, my personal favorite, salumi slicer / panino maker at Zia Teressa’s beloved [...]

Homemade Whole Wheat Ravioli with Sweet Potato Filling Recipe

Homemade Whole Wheat Ravioli with Sweet Potato Filling Recipe

(photo: from left to right, sweet potato filling, ravioli ready for the boiling water, ravioli in boiling water ready to be removed.  Photos courtesy of Dr. K.) We have some great Scordo.com fans and we’re lucky, as a small Italian food site, to have so many loyal readers (thank you!).   One of our more devout readers goes by the [...]

Olli Salumeria Americana Review: Speck, Lomo, Coppa, and Salame

Olli Salumeria Americana Review: Speck, Lomo, Coppa, and Salame

  (photo: speck, salame Calabrese, and lomo) Any time a new salumi company decides to open shop in the United States it’s cause for celebration.  And If the same company decides it’s going to raise it’s own heritage hogs in an antibiotic-free (and soon to be organic and nitrate free) open pasture environment, then the salumi company should be praised.   The Virginia [...]