Sleepless for Salami

I latched the door of my shed and exhaled; I’d taken my leap. Would my faith be rewarded? I’d just hung five pounds of sopressata to cure and I was anxious: In my stretch of California, the cool weather salami needs to ripen only lingers for a few months. If I’d somehow botched this batch, I might not get another chance until next year.

I am obsessed with meat. I have eaten nearly everything that has walked or run or swum or flown across my path; I hunt birds, boar and even bunnies. I seek out those bold farmers willing to forsake the cheap for the good and buy their hogs, their “walking around” chickens; and then I try to make magic with them.

A steak grilled over hardwood is one of life’s simple wonders. A perfect rack of pork ribs never really leaves your memory, like smoke in the corners of a bar. But a salami, a sopressata, saucisson sec, chorizo, linguica or a finocchiona isn’t just meat – it is alchemy.

Well-made dry sausage sings a symphony when you eat it. Chewy. Silky. Tangy. Lush. Some are spicy, some subtle. Aromas have somehow arrived at the center of the salami that could not possibly have been there when it was created weeks or months – or years – ago. Salami are fermented, which is why they’re often likened to cheese or wine. It is this that lifts their sum beyond their parts.

Performing alchemy is never easy, however, and the charcutier’s bane is botulism, which can kill. This alone keeps most cooks from making salami. Not me.

Still, I checked in on my sopressata from time to time. One day, I saw a speck of mold. My stomach turned. I’d done everything right, hadn’t I? I ran to my books. I combed the internet. And then I realized: Lots of salami has white mold on it. Doesn’t it?

I grew up gazing at hams and sausages hanging in Italian “pork stores” in my hometown in New Jersey. One of my earliest taste memories is of eating a deli sandwich stuffed with coppa, prosciutto, Genoa salami and pepperoni: So different from the wet, white-bread ham I’d been eating! I was transported.

So I read. I learned about nitrate. “Bactoferm” entered my vocabulary (it’s like baker’s yeast for salami). I learned about the effects of salt and light and temperature and moisture. I learned to scorn collagen casings and inferior meat. I learned that pork fat is my friend.

Learning is different from doing, however, which is different from knowing. My first attempts with fresh or smoked sausage (the gateway drugs of the dry sausage world) each failed on some fundamental level. The fat had been too warm when I ground it, leaving a smeary mess. I’d added too much moisture, leaving a mushy mess. I tried bresaola, an air-dried loin of beef or venison. It rotted; but I got better.

With this batch of sopressata I was playing double-or-nothing. I’d made it from elk and pork fatback, Chianti and Malabar peppercorns, cayenne peppers and thyme from my garden and just a hint of imported pimenton from Spain, all stuffed into natural hog casings. It looked beautiful.

But Very Bad Things can happen during the drying process, so even after I’d convinced myself that the specks of white mold I’d seen were benign, I was nervous about shuttering my sausage. Fuzzy green mold, rot or something called “case hardening” all can ruin weeks of effort, as could a severe freeze or a hot spell.

Yet this is the allure of it: One batch of salami is never exactly like another. It is a journey and an art, despite charcuterie’s backbone in science. A month passed, I opened the door to my shed, carried the sopressata to the kitchen and cut one open.

It looked beautiful. I ate a piece and lost myself in its savory meatiness. I’d done it.

A former commercial fisherman and line cook, Hank Shaw has paid the bills as a political correspondent since 1992. Shaw, who has eaten his way through four state capitals, is now Sacramento Bureau Chief for The Record of Stockton, Calif. He spends his free time making Old World-style salami at his Orangevale home when he’s not fishing, hunting or foraging around Northern California with his bemused girlfriend.