Italian Charcuterie Tour – In London

If you want to explore Italy’s rich and varied charcuterie, Cantina del Ponte (Shad Thames, next to Tower Bridge) can offer this journey of flavours in London. Head Chef, Claudio Gottardo, has sourced the absolute best examples of each kind of Italian charcuterie and separated them into selections from Northern, Central and Southern Italy, as well as a set of unusual charcuterie from across Italy. Each selection will be available for a month, accompanied by a glass of wine from the region and followed by a local pasta dish – all for £19.50 per person.



January is Northern Italy, and includes bresaola (nothing like the dry stuff you get in supermarkets), sopressa, san daniele ham, melt-in-the-mouth lardo pernigotti and spec. The pasta dish – canaderli - was sold as giant gnocci, but was actually superb bread dumplings, flavoured with herbs, that I hadn’t heard of before.

Go in February for the Central Italian charcuterie menu, that encompasses wild boar salami, parma ham, mortadella and culatello. Pigs destined for culatello are fed parmesan and you can actually taste it in the meat – unusual and fantastic.

Mortadella


The southern Italy menu for march includes spicy salami, herby porchetta (like the French anchaud, but served thinly sliced), n’duja and sopressata- The soft, fatty n’duja is really tasty spread on bread, and very much like Spanish sobrasada, except that the Spanish version is made with smoked paprika, whereas the smokiness in the Italian one comes from smoking the finished sausage.

N'duja


The ‘strange’ charcuterie selection has not been confirmed yet, but this is the one I am most looking forward to trying. Expect blood, guts and balls, made delectable through hundreds of years of recipe perfecting – can’t wait!

Cantina del Ponte

Images supplied by Nife Is Life, Italian online deli

Countryside & Roadside Snacks - 27th August 2007

Monday morning, and we were off to the hydroelectric dam project that my father is working on, in Bumbuna. First we had to get through Freetown’s traffic mayhem, which meant sitting in stationary traffic for quite a long time, watching people selling, delivering, shouting, greeting, carrying and hanging out. Then there was a terrific downpour, and umbrellas of all colours burst into flower, whilst stalls were quickly covered in plastic.

Eventually, we left Freetown behind, and I spent the four hour drive upcountry enjoying the sights of palm plantations and my first African thatched houses, as well as returning the many greetings from villagers and fellow road-users (on foot, in cars, in buses, on motorbikes and in lethal-looking lorries). I was taking in scenes so typically African that I felt like I was in a fibre-glass-based safari park.



Lunch on the road was sweet green bananas, and char-grilled corn on the cob (tasty but could have done with some salt and butter), bought from street sellers. We also purchased some strange fruit that we were told were plums, but looked nothing like them and were inedible raw.

As we got further into the countryside, children outside mud and straw houses would go berserk waving, laughing and screaming “O Poto, O Poto, O Poto!” (Meaning ‘European’/ ‘white man’) at us as we went past. We’d get to what looked like major places on the map, but the settlements themselves were no bigger than a small village. The mud, thatch and tin cottages and huts, with chickens and goats milling about them, looked restful and solid after the slums of Freetown.



The Range Rover climbed up ochre dirt tracks, further into the jungle. We eventually arrived at the dam project worker’s camp by early evening, just in time for some pre-dinner drinks with freshly roasted peanuts - which tasted exactly like peanut butter. Without a doubt the nicest peanuts I’ve tasted, I vowed to try and find raw peanuts in Europe when I got back, so I could re-create the home-roasted flavour.

I asked the barman for the best places to drink in Bumbuna village, and he told us about Mabinti Johnny’s bar, where you can also get good food. We’d have to search it out the next day…



Being an Italian-run project, the camp’s cafeteria serves Italian-style food. ‘Camp’ makes it all sound very basic, but actually it’s a collection of bungalows and communal buildings. It was a nice change to have red wine and a meal of meatballs, potato, cheeses, charcuterie, and salads. ‘Specially the wine. ☺