Boccalone pancetta piana
A friend who subscribes to a Boccalone "box" asked me to pick it up for her yesterday, since she was coming to my house for dinner and I live only five minutes from the Boccalone factory (just one more chow spot I live five minutes from -- I'm so lucky!). If you can find out what their pickup times are, they'll sell whatever they have available to the general public (at slightly higher prices, although they gave me my friend's member price). They were sampling several things: a suckling piglet "ham" (very mild and tender) and the orange fennel salami, but the real winner was the pancetta piana: dry-cured pork belly, that's sort of like a cross between pancetta and prosciutto. I'm sure you could do stuff with it (I'm thinking it would be even better than prosciutto for wrapping asparagus), but I'm just eating the tissue-paper thin slices straight out of the package (when I wondered aloud who of my acquaintance was worthy of sharing it, the guy who sliced it for me suggested opening the package before I got home and nibbling it in the car).
If you run across this, don't miss it!
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Boccalone LLC
1924 International Blvd, Oakland, CA 94606, USA
Ruth Lafler
Dec 16, 2007 05:23PM
I just had to reply to this even though I'm on the east coast, north of Boston. When my DH went to our local purveyor of salumi recently to buy pancetta, he returned with a package of freshly sliced, the most delictable pancetta I have ever tasted. It was indeed Pancetta Piana. Oh what a treat it was. I used it reluctantly for the dish I was making that night, but we could have just as easily made a meal of it with tomatoes, cheese, bread and wine.
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It is gorgeous raw. Almost crazy to cook it, but I did crisp some up when I first received some in my box and it was mind bending. They'll tell you it's wasteful (due to shrinkage) and unnecessary (because it's great raw), but if you cook it (carefully so it doesn't evaporate like foie gras) to a crisp it's like eating salty pig candy--tissue thin w/ huge flavor.
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The last shipment had what is now my benchmark favorite Mortadella -- blew me away!
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It is really nice, esp. as a fried mortadella sandwich on Artisan sourdough. A high end take on the terrifying but classic fried bologna sandwich.
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