Lardo di Colonnata Redux

I know I’ve written before about the ethereal lardo famously produced above Massa, but just had to notify lardo lovers of a wonderful and evocative piece by Amy Cortese and Robert McCanless called Hog Heaven: Cutting the Lardo di Colonnata. It’s from Leite’s Culinaria, a site darn near as pretty as the surroundings around Colonnata.

You always learn what you want to learn, and here are two things I wanted to learn:

1. That “paradoxically, lardo has less fat than butter and is loaded with nutrition.”

2. That a feisty 90 year old can claim, without fear of being chastised by self-proclaimed food Nazis, that her longevity was due to “years of drinking wine, smoking cigarettes, and eating lardo.”

So that does it! I’m heading to Colonnata pretty darn soon after I set my feet on Italian soil. I’m having them float some fluffy, white ribbons of Lardo on a slab or two of warm, slightly toasted bread. I’m gonna inhale the perfume that emanates from said concoction lustily before I sink my teeth into it. Then I will be as close to heaven as one should get without a validated ticket.

Only I won’t take up smoking. There’s only so much I will do to reach 90.