Ventricina revisited

As I mentioned before in a post about ventricina, one of the typical salamis of our region, it’s made in the winter. Consequently, the local people have been busy making it and, now that the winter is coming to the end, they’re finishing up the salami-making. In fact, the other day, we were walking by and noticed that our neighbors were making ventricina and sausage. They make quite a bit of it since it is for their own use and they also sell it privately.

We couldn’t resist going in and having a look and, since we didn’t make any this year, I asked if I could take some pictures. They were pleased to oblige as long as I didn’t show them in their work clothes. Can’t blame them there.
Here’s some sausage that they had made. This is plain pork sausage, but they also made some with liver. And let me tell you, it’s spicy too. The sausage here is generally made with pork, ground hot and sweet red pepper, and salt.

They even had some ribs hanging there to dry. O’s mom does this a lot. She hangs them near the fire where they dry and acquire a nice smokey flavor. Then she cooks them up in tomato sauce. Delicious!

This is what they call the “polpa di ventricina” or, in other words, the rough cut pork mixed with the various spices that they use. Most people will make some with and some without hot pepper. This batch has hot pepper in it. You can tell by the vibrant red color. Many people also put fennel seed in their ventricina. As you can see, they mix some fat in with the meat. This adds to the flavor, but also helps hold the ventricina together when it’s sliced.

Usually, when done making the ventricina, there’s a little polpa left over which can then be cooked on the grill over a hot wood fire. There’s nothing like it. (Yes, they were nice enough to give us some that we had for lunch on Sunday with some nice crusty bread. Yummm)

Here they are filling the skins for the ventricina. As you can see, to speed the process up a bit, they use a meat grinding machine without the blade. One person runs the machine and the other person makes sure the meat gets packed in evenly. In the old days, the skins were packed by hand, but that took a lot more time. No blade can be used in the machine though because if the meat is ground too small, it’s nothing more than a plain old salami. As I mentioned once before when talking about ventricina, it is actually made with the best cuts of pork while the other types of salamis are made with the other cuts of pork. That’s why the pieces of pork are fairly large, so the full flavor can be appreciated.

Once the ventricina are finished, they are tied with cord, covered with lard, and hung to dry. They will be periodically recovered with lard through the first few months of their aging. They will need to age for at least 6 months in a cool place. Most ventricina is left to age for a year.

Here’s a close up of the finished ventricina.

And now, I’m off to cook some spicy sausage….

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