[Sca-cooks] question of Italian meats

[Stefan li Rous]

niccolo commented:
> They aren't exactly substitutes as pancetta is a dry cured belly product re=
> lated to American bacon (distant), but is not at all smoked.  Prosciutto is=
>  a hung dried ham that is only salt cured, if memory serves, and is a produ=
> ct originally  of Parma.  So, they are both pork, but one is belly and the =
> other is ham.  I suspect you will want to use less of the prosciutto as it =
> is a good bit stronger, and add a little fat from another source to enrich =
> it if so desired.  A closer substitute would be plain, raw belly if you hav=
> e a good market nearby. Hard spot to be in with no pancetta to buy . . .

Thank you. I've wondered what the differance was between these different
meats was.

Is there a good generic name for these kinds of things? In other words,
if you were searching a big list of files :-) in what file would you
expect to find info on such things? ham-msg for instance? Or, since that
is a different part of the pig's anatomy, would you not look there?

Last saturday at Sam's Warehouse, I bought an interesting appetizer for
a belated Mother's Day get-together on Sunday, a jar of cherry peppers
stuffed with provolone cheese wrapped in proscuitto marinated in oil.
Quite good. Unfortunately, I really can't taste the proscuitto over
the taste of the cheese and the pepper.

And to bring up a previous discussion, the jar was refrigerated and
the label says to keep it refrigerated. I also looked again at the
cheese cubes in the olive oil at my local grocery. They too, were in
a refrigerated case and the label says to keep refrigerated. However,
they looked so good, I bought a jar.

> niccolo difrancesco
> (laridum dominari)

Dominant lard? :-) No, you don't want Stefan translating things.

--
THLord  Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
Mark S. Harris             Austin, Texas         stefan at texas.net
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