This is a great story of how we make salami(sopressata), and the Salciccia(what we call "the fresh") and blood pudding. The recipe for the Sangere' is different than ours but similar. We use the Vincotto And honey. No breadcrumbs and no basil for sure but it's close. We did not "can" it but ate it fresh and when it was gone we did without for another year.
This was taken off the internet and for a minute I thought I was back at my Nana's butchering pigs with my cousins Aunts and Uncles, the fighting and teasing in Calabrese dialect was sometimes deafening. That is until my Grandfather Guissepe had enough. Then everyone got very quiet and industrious. This is VERY accurate as to the traditions and customs.........and especially the not arguing with whoever was the Matron.
Family rites
By Matt Preston
July 16 2002
Some families argue about politics. Some about religion. I'm watching four brothers arguing about the best place to shoot a pig.
"Between the ears and an inch up."
"No, two inches."
"Just don't miss and shoot him in the back leg like you did three years ago!" The three brothers unburdened by the task of shooting snicker.
Their breath hangs like cigarette smoke in a dawn light as hard and grey as steel. Then a single shot rings out round the concrete cattle yard, followed by the sound of 160 kilograms of pig collapsing on to the bed of the caged trailer.
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"I'll throat 'im," volunteers youngest brother Larry, slipping into the cage and turning his neat initial incision into a gash as he severs the jugular.
"It's quieter and easier this way," says Larry stepping back from the coagulating pool of claret. He can remember when they'd tie the pig to a post to slit its throat - and the hysterical squealing that went with it.
Once the blood would have been collected to make "chocolate". Not any more - the lads' love of this Calabrian speciality of sweet blood pudding (see Maurizio Cianciaruso's recipe, below) evaporated when they found out what went into it.
"We used to use everything but the s---," says brother Ed.
Every meat eater should look into the eyes of their dinner at least once.
The steaming mass of organs and guts that later spills from a now-cleaned and
de-bristled carcass goes to the dogs; in poorer times it might have made such delights as stuffed heart or ndugghia, the Calabrian liver and lung sausage. Now, all the brothers save are some smaller intestine for use as "bungs" (skins) for thin sausages.
It's Ed who seems to have picked up the mantle of organiser since their Dad died eight years ago. "We had to continue or else we knew this tradition would die," he says now.
He claims his old man was much fussier than he is, but brother Jack raises an eyebrow. "Yeah, but you're still worse than mum," he snorts. Larry and eldest brother Franco both fall about laughing.
This year there's only one pig to kill. To save time the local abattoir butchered the other three. It's a first but Ed reckons it's the way of the future. The pigs were bought for $2.40 a kilogram from a local piggery a couple of months ago. "Same litter, same feed. That's the secret for good salamis. You never mix your pigs," reveals Franco, the pig expert among the brothers.
His tender care and a diet of crushed maize and wheat made his charges bulk up and exchange their piggery fat for leaner meat. "All were castrated because boar meat stinks. Also, I avoid butchering females on heat because that affects the meat. Tradition says a young sow four or five weeks pregnant with her first litter is best," notes Franco helpfully.
Split with a chainsaw, the cleaned carcase halves are driven back to hang under the eaves of Mum's garage. The 113 kilograms of meat from the abattoir-killed pigs is inside, sorted into paler meat for big salamis and the fattier, darker meat, which tends to go off sooner, for faster-curing skinnier sausages. Salt equivalent to 3 per cent of weight has been added to each tub of meat. Ground extra fine, it burns the hands as it's mixed in.
The flavourings are a matriarchal domain. Mum adds dried chillis, dried capsicum and "sauce" - a fine paste of roasted capsicum that gives many Calabrian sausages their typical colour and a little sweetness. No one questions her proportions. There's steel in those eyes and an iron will when it comes to how things should be done. "I reckon she thinks we don't know anything as we've all only been doing this for 40 years," jokes Larry - very quietly.
Mum is particular about how the sauce is mixed in - first with a rolling motion, then punching until the meat is really sticky. A spoonful of the mix is fried for her approval, and one of the world's oldest production lines swings into action. There's a hierarchy on the line. The top dog fills. It's a special skill.
"The salami need to be firm. If there's air inside it kills it," says Jack of the fat meat balloon in his hand.
As a junior you get to refill the sausage machine and dream of working your way up to turning the handle that pushes out the meat. A third family member ties off the salami with twine and passes it on to Larry and Mum, who truss it up in the old-fashioned way.
While others have moved to artificial skins less prone to splitting during filling, Mum still insists on sheep's appendix for the larger casings and smaller pork intestines.
Through the morning more help arrives until a couple of dozen people throng the garage. Some clean the ears, heads and the trotters reserved for what this Australian family with strong Calabrian roots call souzo - pork preserved in a sharply vinegared jelly. "Dad used to put the eyeballs in as well just to freak us out," remembers Franco.
The early mediaeval Germanic roots of the word are just one of many signs of quite how old this pig-killing tradition is. The Germans ruled southern Italy way back in the 13th century. While Calabria's famous sausages and salamis date back to the arrival of ancient Greek colonists in southern Italy, according to Italy's Ministero delle Risorse Agricole, Alimentari e Forestali, the tradition of butchering the family pig for winter food is far, far older. Pigs have lived beside us for more than 9000 years, feeding on our scraps and in turn feeding us. Much of what's happening in this small Victorian garage is living history.
At noon everyone breaks for lunch. And what a lunch! Mum's small kitchen table is crowded with lasagnes, stuffed peppers, a chicken pasta bake, salads, meats and her famous meatballs. Then there are pies, cakes, biscuits - all home-baked - and a bread pudding that has even the diabetic brother risking thirds. It's one of those meals that leaves you with a warm glow on a cold day. Warm from the food, warm from the little tumblers of home-made red wine, but above all warm from the reminiscing. Like the time Dad ran over a beehive in the field and had to be drenched in grappa to relieve the pain. Or when a cousin's pig broke loose while having its throat cut, running squealing and bleeding through the town, the family in full cry behind.
There's much laughter, but you also suspect that these two days each year help keep such memories vivid and those who have died alive.
After lunch Dad's brother arrives. Small and compact as a walnut, he trawls his fingers through the salami mix tasting its sticky rawness. "Not bad," he says with studied dismissiveness.
He checks the morning's carcase hanging under the eaves awaiting butchering. "Pah, you've used a chainsaw you lazy bastards -� it would be fine if it was sharp. I'd hate to see what you'd get up to without Mum to keep an eye on you," he teases.
His big entrance made, he rolls up his sleeves and gets stuck into teaching Ed how to make pancetta the old Calabrian way.
Beneath the veiled jokes about his salamis never winning gold medals like the brothers', there's no little respect for him. "His salami are wonderful, better than ours, but don't you dare tell him," whispers Ed.
To him falls the honour of cutting a cross from the back fat. It will go into the huge stainless steel "copper" to ensure divine help with rendering the lard. Jack questions its necessity and is shot down by his mother. "Your father did it for 50 years. I never seen him make lard without it," she asserts.
On the other side of the garage, the salamis - about 300 of them now - are boxed. They'll be stored under weights in the style of the classic Calabrian soppressata then hung from the rafters of the garage.
"Heat and rain are the enemy of salamis. You want cold frosty weather. You don't want them to dry too quickly," says Ed.
"And you never make salamis on the new moon," reminds Mum.
"Why?" I ask. It's a mistake.
"You just don't," she replies, fixing me with the stare she usually reserves for Jack.
Later, on selected cloudy days, a small fire will be lit to gently smoke the salamis. That's how the fire brigade got called to the farm a few years back by a neighbour who saw the smoke and feared the worst.
After curing, the salamis can be Cryovac-ed, wrapped in foil and frozen, hung in a cold spot or stored the old way under oil.
Everything goes swimmingly until Ed sniffs at the copper filled with hunks of snowy pork fat. It smells bad. Ed worries it's the strong smell of boar meat. Perhaps a porker wasn't properly castrated? And then it hits. The smell's not a million miles from chlorine and it's only on the abattoir-killed skins. Their freshly killed pig smells sweet and clean. The stink makes the skin, head and trotters of the three abattoir-killed pigs useless. Luckily, the meat is fine and the taint evaporates from the lard during the 12 hours of rendering.
Where previously there was talk of sending all the pigs to the abattoir next year, now it looks as if the ritual of the killing yard will remain at home. "Sometimes the old ways are the best," muses Ed.
The lard is very much Ed's domain. While his father was alive the two would sit through the night under the clear winter sky tending it. Topping up the water. Stoking the fire. Stirring the bubbling fat to ensure it didn't stick, using the same old wooden paddle for 40 years. Sometimes they'd yarn in the moonlight; sometimes they sit there together - father and son gazing into the fire.
This year, Ed entrusts the night watch to his nephews. They do a good job - even if one lad gets locked in the car boot while sleeping and Mum finds another snuggling by her wood heater at 4am trying to get some feeling back into his limbs.
The next morning, more youngsters appear to watch bones being added to the lard along with salt to taste and then the miracle of the lard suddenly turning clear. Their presence is a good sign for the future of the tradition. "I reckon they know more about all this than we did at their age," says Ed.
The lard is drained into tins, leaving a sludge at the bottom of the copper. These are the highly prized issymolyas. Franco has been rhapsodising about them spread on his mother's "pitte" bread - another Calabrian delicacy not so removed from the cracklings served with corn bread of an Arkansas hog slaughter. The antiquity of the pig-killing tradition means you'll see many such similarities across European-based cultures where the pig is so prized.
I leave with the clean smell of pig and just a whiff of jealousy in my nostrils. In this era of deconstructed families I'm envious. My family has no such tradition to bind us with communal endeavour and allow us to celebrate those we love and those we've loved together. Killing the pig, you see, is about more than just bringing home the bacon.
To protect the privacy of the family, some names have been changed
MY MOTHER'S RECIPE
The family of fellow Calabrian, De Bortoli chef Maurizio Cianciaruso, still make "Calabrian chocolate" or "sanguinaccio" as they call it. "This recipe of my mother's is older than anyone in the family can remember and making it was always a big part of when our family killed a pig," he says.
Sanguinaccio (Calabrian chocolate)
5 litres fresh pigs' blood, not more than a day old
1 litre water
1 litre honey
500g white breadcrumbs
500g cocoa powder
500g dark cooking chocolate, broken into cubes
100g cinnamon powder
50g clove powder
100g basil powder
500g roasted, peeled and chopped walnuts
500g chopped sultanas
200mls olive oil
4 oranges (zest and juice)
METHOD
�� Place a large wide-bottomed pan on a slow heat. Strain the blood and pour it into the pot with the water and honey.
�� Cook very, very slowly constantly stirring to ensure it doesn't stick, clot or curdle. The liquid must remain smooth at all times.
�� Cook for about an hour until the liquid reduces and thickens to a custardy consistency. This will give you a fruity, nutty spread with a consistency of Nutella that Cianciaruso suggests serving spread on bread. Or continue to reduce for a thicker consistency that can be served sliced with cheese. Test the mixture by putting a spoonful on a plate. A rusty liquid will drain from an undercooked mixture.
�� When thickened stir in all the other ingredients and continue to cook slowly. When the chocolate and cocoa dissolve gradually add the olive oil to give your "chocolate" a sheen and to adjust the thickness.
�� Pour into sterilised jars pushing well down to eliminate air pockets. Top with oil and leave to cool. Traditionally this was made in winter, so store in a cold place.
�� Cianciaruso points out that like all Italian cooking, it's not about the recipe, it's about how you do it. So experiment. Sweet blood puddings such as this are made all over Italy. The Abruzzesi might use toasted almonds instead of walnuts, in Campania pine nuts and vanilla, while in Emilia-Romagna they add eggs. Vinocotto or a sweetened syrup of reduced figs can be used instead of honey.
This was taken off the internet and for a minute I thought I was back at my Nana's butchering pigs with my cousins Aunts and Uncles, the fighting and teasing in Calabrese dialect was sometimes deafening. That is until my Grandfather Guissepe had enough. Then everyone got very quiet and industrious. This is VERY accurate as to the traditions and customs.........and especially the not arguing with whoever was the Matron.
Family rites
By Matt Preston
July 16 2002
Some families argue about politics. Some about religion. I'm watching four brothers arguing about the best place to shoot a pig.
"Between the ears and an inch up."
"No, two inches."
"Just don't miss and shoot him in the back leg like you did three years ago!" The three brothers unburdened by the task of shooting snicker.
Their breath hangs like cigarette smoke in a dawn light as hard and grey as steel. Then a single shot rings out round the concrete cattle yard, followed by the sound of 160 kilograms of pig collapsing on to the bed of the caged trailer.
advertisement
advertisement
"I'll throat 'im," volunteers youngest brother Larry, slipping into the cage and turning his neat initial incision into a gash as he severs the jugular.
"It's quieter and easier this way," says Larry stepping back from the coagulating pool of claret. He can remember when they'd tie the pig to a post to slit its throat - and the hysterical squealing that went with it.
Once the blood would have been collected to make "chocolate". Not any more - the lads' love of this Calabrian speciality of sweet blood pudding (see Maurizio Cianciaruso's recipe, below) evaporated when they found out what went into it.
"We used to use everything but the s---," says brother Ed.
Every meat eater should look into the eyes of their dinner at least once.
The steaming mass of organs and guts that later spills from a now-cleaned and
de-bristled carcass goes to the dogs; in poorer times it might have made such delights as stuffed heart or ndugghia, the Calabrian liver and lung sausage. Now, all the brothers save are some smaller intestine for use as "bungs" (skins) for thin sausages.
It's Ed who seems to have picked up the mantle of organiser since their Dad died eight years ago. "We had to continue or else we knew this tradition would die," he says now.
He claims his old man was much fussier than he is, but brother Jack raises an eyebrow. "Yeah, but you're still worse than mum," he snorts. Larry and eldest brother Franco both fall about laughing.
This year there's only one pig to kill. To save time the local abattoir butchered the other three. It's a first but Ed reckons it's the way of the future. The pigs were bought for $2.40 a kilogram from a local piggery a couple of months ago. "Same litter, same feed. That's the secret for good salamis. You never mix your pigs," reveals Franco, the pig expert among the brothers.
His tender care and a diet of crushed maize and wheat made his charges bulk up and exchange their piggery fat for leaner meat. "All were castrated because boar meat stinks. Also, I avoid butchering females on heat because that affects the meat. Tradition says a young sow four or five weeks pregnant with her first litter is best," notes Franco helpfully.
Split with a chainsaw, the cleaned carcase halves are driven back to hang under the eaves of Mum's garage. The 113 kilograms of meat from the abattoir-killed pigs is inside, sorted into paler meat for big salamis and the fattier, darker meat, which tends to go off sooner, for faster-curing skinnier sausages. Salt equivalent to 3 per cent of weight has been added to each tub of meat. Ground extra fine, it burns the hands as it's mixed in.
The flavourings are a matriarchal domain. Mum adds dried chillis, dried capsicum and "sauce" - a fine paste of roasted capsicum that gives many Calabrian sausages their typical colour and a little sweetness. No one questions her proportions. There's steel in those eyes and an iron will when it comes to how things should be done. "I reckon she thinks we don't know anything as we've all only been doing this for 40 years," jokes Larry - very quietly.
Mum is particular about how the sauce is mixed in - first with a rolling motion, then punching until the meat is really sticky. A spoonful of the mix is fried for her approval, and one of the world's oldest production lines swings into action. There's a hierarchy on the line. The top dog fills. It's a special skill.
"The salami need to be firm. If there's air inside it kills it," says Jack of the fat meat balloon in his hand.
As a junior you get to refill the sausage machine and dream of working your way up to turning the handle that pushes out the meat. A third family member ties off the salami with twine and passes it on to Larry and Mum, who truss it up in the old-fashioned way.
While others have moved to artificial skins less prone to splitting during filling, Mum still insists on sheep's appendix for the larger casings and smaller pork intestines.
Through the morning more help arrives until a couple of dozen people throng the garage. Some clean the ears, heads and the trotters reserved for what this Australian family with strong Calabrian roots call souzo - pork preserved in a sharply vinegared jelly. "Dad used to put the eyeballs in as well just to freak us out," remembers Franco.
The early mediaeval Germanic roots of the word are just one of many signs of quite how old this pig-killing tradition is. The Germans ruled southern Italy way back in the 13th century. While Calabria's famous sausages and salamis date back to the arrival of ancient Greek colonists in southern Italy, according to Italy's Ministero delle Risorse Agricole, Alimentari e Forestali, the tradition of butchering the family pig for winter food is far, far older. Pigs have lived beside us for more than 9000 years, feeding on our scraps and in turn feeding us. Much of what's happening in this small Victorian garage is living history.
At noon everyone breaks for lunch. And what a lunch! Mum's small kitchen table is crowded with lasagnes, stuffed peppers, a chicken pasta bake, salads, meats and her famous meatballs. Then there are pies, cakes, biscuits - all home-baked - and a bread pudding that has even the diabetic brother risking thirds. It's one of those meals that leaves you with a warm glow on a cold day. Warm from the food, warm from the little tumblers of home-made red wine, but above all warm from the reminiscing. Like the time Dad ran over a beehive in the field and had to be drenched in grappa to relieve the pain. Or when a cousin's pig broke loose while having its throat cut, running squealing and bleeding through the town, the family in full cry behind.
There's much laughter, but you also suspect that these two days each year help keep such memories vivid and those who have died alive.
After lunch Dad's brother arrives. Small and compact as a walnut, he trawls his fingers through the salami mix tasting its sticky rawness. "Not bad," he says with studied dismissiveness.
He checks the morning's carcase hanging under the eaves awaiting butchering. "Pah, you've used a chainsaw you lazy bastards -� it would be fine if it was sharp. I'd hate to see what you'd get up to without Mum to keep an eye on you," he teases.
His big entrance made, he rolls up his sleeves and gets stuck into teaching Ed how to make pancetta the old Calabrian way.
Beneath the veiled jokes about his salamis never winning gold medals like the brothers', there's no little respect for him. "His salami are wonderful, better than ours, but don't you dare tell him," whispers Ed.
To him falls the honour of cutting a cross from the back fat. It will go into the huge stainless steel "copper" to ensure divine help with rendering the lard. Jack questions its necessity and is shot down by his mother. "Your father did it for 50 years. I never seen him make lard without it," she asserts.
On the other side of the garage, the salamis - about 300 of them now - are boxed. They'll be stored under weights in the style of the classic Calabrian soppressata then hung from the rafters of the garage.
"Heat and rain are the enemy of salamis. You want cold frosty weather. You don't want them to dry too quickly," says Ed.
"And you never make salamis on the new moon," reminds Mum.
"Why?" I ask. It's a mistake.
"You just don't," she replies, fixing me with the stare she usually reserves for Jack.
Later, on selected cloudy days, a small fire will be lit to gently smoke the salamis. That's how the fire brigade got called to the farm a few years back by a neighbour who saw the smoke and feared the worst.
After curing, the salamis can be Cryovac-ed, wrapped in foil and frozen, hung in a cold spot or stored the old way under oil.
Everything goes swimmingly until Ed sniffs at the copper filled with hunks of snowy pork fat. It smells bad. Ed worries it's the strong smell of boar meat. Perhaps a porker wasn't properly castrated? And then it hits. The smell's not a million miles from chlorine and it's only on the abattoir-killed skins. Their freshly killed pig smells sweet and clean. The stink makes the skin, head and trotters of the three abattoir-killed pigs useless. Luckily, the meat is fine and the taint evaporates from the lard during the 12 hours of rendering.
Where previously there was talk of sending all the pigs to the abattoir next year, now it looks as if the ritual of the killing yard will remain at home. "Sometimes the old ways are the best," muses Ed.
The lard is very much Ed's domain. While his father was alive the two would sit through the night under the clear winter sky tending it. Topping up the water. Stoking the fire. Stirring the bubbling fat to ensure it didn't stick, using the same old wooden paddle for 40 years. Sometimes they'd yarn in the moonlight; sometimes they sit there together - father and son gazing into the fire.
This year, Ed entrusts the night watch to his nephews. They do a good job - even if one lad gets locked in the car boot while sleeping and Mum finds another snuggling by her wood heater at 4am trying to get some feeling back into his limbs.
The next morning, more youngsters appear to watch bones being added to the lard along with salt to taste and then the miracle of the lard suddenly turning clear. Their presence is a good sign for the future of the tradition. "I reckon they know more about all this than we did at their age," says Ed.
The lard is drained into tins, leaving a sludge at the bottom of the copper. These are the highly prized issymolyas. Franco has been rhapsodising about them spread on his mother's "pitte" bread - another Calabrian delicacy not so removed from the cracklings served with corn bread of an Arkansas hog slaughter. The antiquity of the pig-killing tradition means you'll see many such similarities across European-based cultures where the pig is so prized.
I leave with the clean smell of pig and just a whiff of jealousy in my nostrils. In this era of deconstructed families I'm envious. My family has no such tradition to bind us with communal endeavour and allow us to celebrate those we love and those we've loved together. Killing the pig, you see, is about more than just bringing home the bacon.
To protect the privacy of the family, some names have been changed
MY MOTHER'S RECIPE
The family of fellow Calabrian, De Bortoli chef Maurizio Cianciaruso, still make "Calabrian chocolate" or "sanguinaccio" as they call it. "This recipe of my mother's is older than anyone in the family can remember and making it was always a big part of when our family killed a pig," he says.
Sanguinaccio (Calabrian chocolate)
5 litres fresh pigs' blood, not more than a day old
1 litre water
1 litre honey
500g white breadcrumbs
500g cocoa powder
500g dark cooking chocolate, broken into cubes
100g cinnamon powder
50g clove powder
100g basil powder
500g roasted, peeled and chopped walnuts
500g chopped sultanas
200mls olive oil
4 oranges (zest and juice)
METHOD
�� Place a large wide-bottomed pan on a slow heat. Strain the blood and pour it into the pot with the water and honey.
�� Cook very, very slowly constantly stirring to ensure it doesn't stick, clot or curdle. The liquid must remain smooth at all times.
�� Cook for about an hour until the liquid reduces and thickens to a custardy consistency. This will give you a fruity, nutty spread with a consistency of Nutella that Cianciaruso suggests serving spread on bread. Or continue to reduce for a thicker consistency that can be served sliced with cheese. Test the mixture by putting a spoonful on a plate. A rusty liquid will drain from an undercooked mixture.
�� When thickened stir in all the other ingredients and continue to cook slowly. When the chocolate and cocoa dissolve gradually add the olive oil to give your "chocolate" a sheen and to adjust the thickness.
�� Pour into sterilised jars pushing well down to eliminate air pockets. Top with oil and leave to cool. Traditionally this was made in winter, so store in a cold place.
�� Cianciaruso points out that like all Italian cooking, it's not about the recipe, it's about how you do it. So experiment. Sweet blood puddings such as this are made all over Italy. The Abruzzesi might use toasted almonds instead of walnuts, in Campania pine nuts and vanilla, while in Emilia-Romagna they add eggs. Vinocotto or a sweetened syrup of reduced figs can be used instead of honey.
