Ciauscolo

Ciauscolo is a soft, spreadable cured pork sausage from Le Marche, on Italy's Adriatic side. It is made from pork belly, shoulder and lean trimmings, ground repeatedly through progressively finer plates until it becomes a paste, seasoned with salt, black pepper and garlic steeped in wine, stuffed into natural casing and cured for only two to four weeks.

Three things make it spreadable: a fat content of roughly 40 to 50 per cent, an extremely fine grind, and a short cure that stops before the paste dries out. Ordinary salami loses moisture for months and firms up; ciauscolo is caught halfway, while the emulsified fat still holds everything soft.

The name comes from the Latin cibusculum, 'little food': it was the mid-morning snack of farm workers, spread on a slab of bread and eaten in the field without a plate or a knife worth the name. It has held Protected Geographical Indication status since 2009.

Deeply porky, gently salty, with garlic sitting well in the background and black pepper coming through at the end. The texture is the surprise: silky and dense, like a cross between a rustic pâté and softened butter, but with a clean cured-meat flavour rather than the mineral note of anything containing liver.

The mountain versions carry a thin thread of smoke from juniper or beech, which reads as woody rather than bacon-like. Lowland versions skip it and taste sweeter and simpler.

Spread on warm bread it turns semi-liquid at the edges and becomes noticeably richer. That is the intended way to eat it, and it is a different experience from tasting it cold off a knife.

Take it out of the fridge at least an hour before eating. Cold ciauscolo is stiff and tastes of very little; at room temperature the fat softens and the aroma opens up.

Slit the casing lengthways with a knife, peel it back like a case, and spread the paste straight onto bread. In Le Marche the bread is pane sciapo, made without salt, which lets the salume do the work. Warm or grilled bread is better still, since the heat melts the fat slightly.

As a cooking ingredient it is powerful. A tablespoon melted gently in a pan, loosened with pasta water and finished with pecorino makes a complete sauce for two. It is also excellent stirred into scrambled eggs, spooned onto hot polenta, or spread on bread and flashed under a grill for thirty seconds until a crust forms.

Do not cook it hard or long: the fat separates and leaves a dry, useless residue. Low heat, briefly, then serve.

Whole and uncut it keeps in the least cold part of the fridge, 4 to 8 C, for four to six weeks, wrapped in greaseproof paper or a tea towel rather than plastic. It does not sit still: it goes on drying, the fat firms and it becomes less spreadable, so a piece bought for the knife is at its best within the month. A vacuum pack carries a date and that date is the maker's.

Once it is open, cover the cut face with film pressed against it or a sheet of baking paper and work through the piece within a week. The exposed surface oxidises and turns dark brown within a day; a millimetre scraped off gets back to the pink. It freezes whole or in halves for three months with little change, thawed slowly overnight in the fridge and then left an hour at room temperature before the casing is opened. Dry white bloom on the casing is part of the process and lifts with a cloth dipped in vinegar; anything else on the surface is a question for the shop and the label.

The shape gives it away first: short, chubby pieces of 300 grams up to a kilo and a half, in a wrinkled natural casing tied by hand and therefore unevenly. Anything long, slim and cylindrical is not ciauscolo. Pressed, the piece should yield like firm dough. If it feels hard the ageing has gone past the spreadable stage, and if your finger sinks in and stays it is young and wants a few more days. Cut, the paste is an even pink-rose without the white flecks of fat you see in ordinary salame: the fat is there in quantity, emulsified into the meat, and slight browning near the casing is normal.

On the IGP sticker, look for the consortium mark and for the cuts named on the label, which should include belly and shoulder. Flours, starches, milk powder or added proteins mean a factory version imitating the texture instead of getting it from fat. Abroad the two things it gets mixed up with are nduja, which is Calabrian, softer still and red with chilli, and generic spreadable salami sold in tubs, which costs a fraction of an IGP piece.

In Italy, buy it from a norcino in Le Marche or at the weekly markets in Macerata, Fermo and Ascoli Piceno, where producers sell directly and will let you taste before buying. Artisan IGP ciauscolo runs 18 to 28 euro per kilo, and small mountain producers reach 30 to 34. Supermarket vacuum packs cost 12 to 16 euro per kilo.

Abroad it is a specialist item. Italian delicatessens and online importers in the UK stock it seasonally at roughly 28 to 40 pounds per kilo; in the US it appears at Italian specialists and online shops at around 20 to 32 dollars per pound, though availability is patchy and it sells out.

Check the label for the IGP mark and for the cuts: belly and shoulder should be listed. Flour, starch, milk powder or added proteins signal an industrial product engineering the texture rather than getting it from fat and grinding.

Buy whole pieces of 400 to 800 grams rather than pre-sliced anything: ciauscolo is never sliced, and a package of thin slices means you are being sold a different sausage.

The inland Macerata province and the Sibillini mountains are the heartland: Visso, Camerino, Sarnano, San Ginesio, Amandola. These are small towns badly hit by the 2016 earthquakes, where a number of historic butchers have rebuilt and are working again.

Festivals dedicated to ciauscolo cluster between February and May, tied to the traditional winter pig slaughter.

Along the Adriatic coast, from Senigallia down to San Benedetto del Tronto, almost every trattoria opens its antipasto with ciauscolo, fried olive ascolane and inland cheeses. It is one of the easiest regional specialities to encounter without hunting for it, provided you are in Le Marche.

The region is under-visited by foreign travellers, which is part of the appeal: prices are lower than in Tuscany or Emilia and the producers are used to explaining their work.