Lardo di Colonnata

Lardo is the fat from a pig's back, at least three centimetres thick, cured whole. What makes the Colonnata version specific is the container: a conca, a basin cut from a single block of Canaloni marble quarried in the basin above the village, which is low in porosity and slow to change temperature.

The conca is rubbed with garlic, then filled with alternating layers of fat and a seasoning mix of sea salt, coarse black pepper, rosemary, fresh garlic and spices (cinnamon, cloves, star anise, coriander, nutmeg, sage) that varies from family to family. There is no fixed recipe, and the IGP protects the method rather than the spice blend.

Over at least six months the fat releases its own brine, which stays in the vat and submerges it. No water is added, no preservatives are used, and no refrigeration is involved: the larderie are natural cellars and the Apuan Alps supply the climate.

Colonnata is a hamlet of Carrara at 530 metres, surrounded by marble quarries. Its lardo has held IGP status since 2004.

Not what people expect. Sliced paper-thin and laid on hot bread, it melts to almost nothing and tastes clean, herbal and faintly sweet: rosemary, garlic and warm spice arrive before the pork. There is no greasiness on the palate if the slice is thin enough; it dissolves rather than chews.

The salt is assertive, which is why Tuscan bread, famously made without salt, is its traditional partner. Cold and sliced thicker it eats richer and firmer, more like a very soft cured meat than like fat.

Older pieces, nine or ten months in the conca, go deeper and more aromatic, with the spices pushing towards something almost like a mulled note. Different larderie taste distinctly different, and tasting two side by side is the point of visiting.

Slice it as thinly as you physically can, almost transparent, and lay it on hot toasted bread. The heat turns it translucent and it begins to melt as you lift it. Grind black pepper over the top and add nothing else. That is the original quarrymen's version and it has not been improved on.

It is also a finishing fat. Two slices over a resting steak, over roast potatoes straight from the oven, melted into a chickpea soup, or wrapped around a scallop or prawn just before searing.

Do not cook it hard. Fried or rendered, it collapses into ordinary fat and the spices scorch. It belongs at the end of a dish, not the start.

Slice it cold and serve it at room temperature: ten minutes out of the fridge, no longer, or the slices become impossible to handle. Pair it with things that cut fat: fresh figs, chestnut honey, pears, roast chestnuts, or the unsalted Tuscan bread it grew up with.

A slab keeps in the fridge for two to three months, wrapped in greaseproof paper or a cloth, never with cling film pressed against it. The cure on the surface is doing a job: leave it in place until you cut, and take it off only from the face you are working on. Vacuum packs go longer, up to about six months to the date on the pack, but the vacuum compresses the fat and makes it sweat, so open one half an hour before slicing and let it come back to itself.

Slice it cold and serve it at room temperature: out of the fridge ten minutes ahead, no more, because past that the slices become almost impossible to handle. What changes with time is the fat itself, which slowly loses its brightness and turns from white towards cream and then towards yellow at the edges as it oxidises, while the aroma of garlic and rosemary fades. Freezing is possible and mostly pointless given how long it keeps unfrozen; if it has to happen, freeze slabs rather than slices, for no more than four months.

The first thing to clear up in English is the word itself. Lard, in a British or American shop, means rendered pork fat in a tub; lardo is cured back fat, sliced and eaten as it is. Lardo di Colonnata IGP is white with a few pink veins and never yellow, since yellow is oxidation. The surface still carries the pepper, salt and rosemary it was cured with, and that crust stays on: it gets scraped, not washed. To the touch it is soft but not slack, easy to cut with a smooth blade at room temperature and firm again from the fridge.

The pack should show the European IGP logo alongside the wording Lardo di Colonnata IGP and the producer identifier. The larderie in the village are few and known by name, so anything sold in supermarket volume as Colonnata style lardo is a different product, as is the domestic lardo cured by American charcuterie makers. One practical tell: the IGP version comes in irregular slabs and never in geometrically perfect blocks, because a marble basin does not mould shapes. Expect roughly $25 to $40 a pound or £6 to £9 for 100 g.

This is a hard one to buy outside Italy. In the US, cured pork imports are restricted and availability is patchy. Italian specialist importers and high-end delis in New York, San Francisco and Chicago sometimes stock it at 30 to 50 dollars per pound, and several excellent US charcuterie makers produce their own lardo, which is worth buying on its own merits.

In the UK, Italian delicatessens and online specialists carry it at roughly 35 to 55 pounds per kilo, usually in 200-500 g pieces. Ask specifically for Colonnata: plain 'lardo' on a UK counter is often generic Italian or house-cured.

In Italy, 28 to 40 euros per kilo at the larderie in Colonnata itself, more like 40 to 55 in delis elsewhere in the country.

Buy a piece, not slices. Pre-sliced lardo oxidises fast and loses the spice crust, and it is the crust that carries the aroma. Check the fat is white or faintly pink: yellow means it has gone.

Colonnata itself, which takes five minutes to walk across and sits at 530 metres among working marble quarries above Carrara. The larderie sell and slice at the counter (Fausto Guadagni's is the best known beyond the valley) and Ristorante Venanzio in Piazza Palestro is the restaurant that carried lardo from the quarrymen's lunch pails into the guidebooks.

The Sagra del Lardo di Colonnata takes over the village in late August. It is the one occasion to taste several families' spice blends side by side, which is when you understand how much the seasoning varies.

Combine the trip with the quarries. The Fantiscritti and Colonnata basins run jeep and walking tours, and the road up from Carrara passes through the landscape that explains the product better than any label does.