The best part of making salumi is all the recipes that go along with it. One of my favorite dishes is “Polpette di salsiccia e ricotta.” It’s a fairly simple dish but loaded with Mmmmmmmm. Since we just made it the other day, I figured I would post this recipe for “Festa Italiana” hosted by Maryann at Finding la Dolce Vita and Marie at Proud Italian Cook.

What you’ll need:

• 3 eggs
• 1 cup grated parmigiano
• pinch of salt
• pinch of garlic powder
• 2 cups of crumbled bread (I will explain)
• 1 1/2 cups of breadcrumbs
• 2 lb of ricotta
• 1 lb of sausage meat

The difficulty with many Italian recipes passed along from generation to generation is that exact quantities are never know… it’s a pinch of this, a little of that, a taste, eye-it, a splash and little. It sort of makes it tough to forward recipes along and at the same time adds to the romantic quality of Italian cooking. I’ve done my best to guesstimate and have confidence that many of you will know when “it’s right.”

Start by making a simple broth in a large pot. Water, a splash of oil, a pinch of salt and a 1/4 onion diced. Bring your broth to a boil.

Crumbled bread: We make our own bread, so often we’ll have hardened pieces left over that we’ll use to make breadcrumbs. For this recipe we take several pieces of hardened bread and place them in a bowl of water to soften. Once the bread soaks up the water, you’ll be able to crumble it with your hands (hence… crumbled bread.) This helps with the consistence of the polpette and makes them heartier. You can also just use dry breadcrumbs if you wish (guesstimating 3 cups.)

Cook your sausage meat in a large frying pan until it is fully cooked.

In a large bowl mix your bread, ricotta, sausage, eggs, salt, parmigiano and garlic powder. If your mixture is too “soft” you can add breadcrumbs to thicken it up.

Roll your polpette and drop them into your pot of broth one at a time. Make as many as you want but remember to leave some room as they will expand. Cook for 15 minutes. Enjoy and buon appetito!PS- Do you like the broccoli rabe leaf garnish??? it’s all I had! I’m so not a recipe guy.

If you ever get the chance to experience “the day of the pig” in Italy (mostly southern Italy), I would highly recommend it. It’s not officially called “the day of the pig,” I actually just made that up but many Southern Italian families, my nonni and zii included, will raise a pig each year for one purpose……to make sopressata, salsiccia and capicola. For families that take part in this yearly process it’s like a holiday. Families get together, eat, drink and make their sopressata, capicola and salsiccia for the year. A bit of advice though, the first part, the part between when the pig is alive and then NOT alive… is not for the squeamish, so if you do get to experience this process I would recommend starting after that part.

Here in the States we don’t have the space to raise a pig, not to mention the neighbors may find it a bit odd but it doesn’t stop us from making these Italian specialties each year. Every winter, we carve out a weekend when we’re all available to help because as my dad says with his thick Italian accent… “no work, no eat!” and nobody wants that! This past Saturday, we all went to my parent’s house to make our salumi and all the delicious recipes that go along with it. As usual, we ate too much and had our share of homemade vino but it’s all part of the experience and I wouldn’t want to miss it. My brother and I have really tried to step it up in the last few years knowing full well that if we don’t learn how to make all these traditional Italian foods that we’ve grown up with, we may not be able to enjoy them someday. Here are a few pictures from, “the day of the pig.” I will have more details on the process itself on Italyville.com when it launches….. it’s coming, I promise!!