I like salted pig parts. The Duca di Tresana isn’t the duke of the village of Tresana you’d respectfully have to take a knee for, but a type of hyper-local salted pig part born in the corner of a tiny historical territory called the Lunigiana.
It looks like this:
The Duca di Tresana consists of equal parts Lardo and loin. It’s soaked in wine for a few days before salting. Then its meaty side is covered with three kinds of pepper and it’s left to age for three months or so.
It is sensuous on the tongue. Meaty and sweet in the mouth. It has become a favorite of mine I’ve long known about but haven’t tried until recently.
It was only a chance meeting. I’d noticed a blip on a Google map one day and found a Salumificio run by a family that could trace its roots back to 1300 in the Lunigiana. That alone was a fact that made me want to rush to the shop. But then there is there slogan, which works out something like “everyone makes salami, we make the salumi of 1954.
I figure that’s good, considering what corporations have done with food since then. So off we went to Salumificio Marsili in Tresana. This is what it looks like when you drive up:
Oh, to live above a place like this!
In any case, we went in and threaded ourselves between the customers to view the merchandise. On our left were the hanging salami. On our right was the macelleria, a butcher’s paradise of local cuts of meat and poultry. There was even a local favorite during the winter pig slaughter time, chiodo di maiale, the paste formed by the ground pig and spices that make it salami, which you (ideally) form into a hamburger shape and put on a terra cotta testa and put in your fireplace to cook. It’s a way to taste the salami safely and judge the spices before it starts its cure. But you can also make a hamburger of it and grill it and man, it’s good.
But right in front of us was that Duca di Tresana. I couldn’t resist. I’m glad I didn’t.
So please go. Have a picnic or buy something that will make that vacation house smell good while it cooks. You might also want to see the castle of Tresana. It’s being restored, so you can’t go in, but it’s said to be haunted, so that’s a plus for some of you I think.
Close your eyes if you can’t take paranormal activity at it’s most horrible. Remember they didn’t have guns so they had to be clever about offing their enemies:
According to popular tales, the castle is haunted by ghosts, from the wandering soldier that terrorizes whoever passes by the keep’s gates to the tormented souls of the enemies victims of an elaborate trap called ruglin that sent them plummeting down to the base of the tower, where their dismembered bodies were carried downstream by the strong currents of the underlying Osca torrent. There are still recorded sightings of paranormal activities in the nearby village of Barbarasco. The unfortunate victims of Tresana, the impregnable tower, still walk this earth…~Tresana Castle
Have fun. Sleep tight, don’t let the pig parts bite.
Vitals
Salumificio Marsili
Loc. Nave – Tresana (MS)
Tel/Fax: 0187 477103