The cured salami and pancetta served to guests at the old “da Bigât” hostelry owe their special flavour to the quality of the meat and the traditional processing methods.
The latter is a sort of ritual, a custom that is repeated every year, enabling guests to try a speciality that is difficult to find nowadays.
The cured salami is prepared using the leanest pork possible and then adding lard (not fat). Once it has been minced, the meat is flavoured with salt, pepper and wine and then put into skins, tied up and hung up to mature.
The pancetta, which gets its name from the fact that it is made from belly (pancia) pork sandwiched in fat, is a highly sought after delicacy amongst gourmets of good, genuine food when it is processed according to the “old style”, or rather when it is salted in order to preserve its natural flavour and then wound loosely around rods, which are rotated by half a turn every day. This enables the salt and flavourings to spread evenly throughout the meat. The pancetta has to be matured for at least three months.