Spalla Cruda

Spalla cruda is the front leg of the pig, the shoulder rather than the ham, boned, dry-salted, massaged with white wine, garlic and pepper, cased, tied and aged for twelve to eighteen months in the damp cellars of the Bassa Parmense. It is the culatello method applied to a different cut.

The cut changes everything. A shoulder is a working limb: more connective tissue, several muscle groups running in different directions, and fat marbled through the lean rather than sitting outside it. The result is more savoury and more sinewy than prosciutto, less velvety than culatello, with a sweetness underneath that a plain cured ham does not have.

There are two versions and they get confused constantly. Spalla cruda is the aged one, sliced and eaten raw like prosciutto. Spalla cotta di San Secondo is a separate product: same cut, but soaked and boiled, then served hot in thick slices with fried dough. The cooked one is the version Verdi wrote about.

At Palasone, a hamlet of Sissa in the lowlands, spalla cruda has always been made, and the place name has become shorthand for the most traditional style. There is no DOP: just a handful of producers, a shared method and an area of a few dozen square kilometres.

Savoury, faintly funky and more assertive than any supermarket prosciutto. The first impression is salt and cellar, a note of damp stone and noble mould that comes from ageing in a lowland basement rather than a climate-controlled room, followed by sweet pork and a lingering trace of garlic and white wine.

Texture is the thing people notice. The slice is not a uniform pink sheet: it is a mosaic of muscle bundles in slightly different shades, separated by fine seams of fat and translucent connective tissue. It chews rather than melts, in a good way, and each part of the piece tastes marginally different from the last.

Set against culatello, spalla is louder and rougher. Set against Parma ham, it is deeper, saltier and more animal. Long-aged pieces develop nutty, almost cheese-like notes from the mould on the outside, and the exterior edge is always more concentrated than the centre.

Slice it by hand with a long knife, thin but not translucent, changing the angle as you work through the piece: the muscle bundles run in different directions and a fixed angle gives you tough slices from some of them. This is why the Bassa cuts spalla by knife and culatello even more so.

The canonical partner is torta fritta: squares of dough fried in lard, served hot, with the meat laid on top so its fat softens. Locally it is never called gnocco fritto, which is the Modena name for the same idea. On ordinary bread it works, but the pairing loses its point.

Unlike culatello, spalla takes company well. Pickled vegetables, salted butter on bread, mostarda, a wedge of Parmigiano Reggiano: all fine. Trimmings and the concentrated outer edge go into pasta sauces and into the filling for anolini.

Serve at room temperature and slice to order. Straight from the fridge, a cured shoulder gives you salt and very little else.

A whole piece that has not been started hangs in a cool damp cellar, where it goes on ageing and losing weight. In a fridge, wrap it in a tea towel rather than film, which takes away the dry protective surface it has spent months building. Once you cut into it, cover the face with greaseproof paper or a sheet of its own fat and work through it over four to six weeks, taking off the outer veil each time, because that layer has oxidised and gone dark.

Vacuum-packed it holds around six months to the date on the pack, and it wants opening two days before you slice it: vacuum compresses the aromas and leaves a closed smell that disperses on its own in the fridge. Already sliced, it oxidises within hours like every long-fibre salume, the red dulling towards brown at the edges, so it is bought in small amounts and laid flat between sheets of paper. White and grey bloom outside is normal and wanted, wiped off with a cloth dampened in white wine before slicing; anything else is a question for the shop and the label.

The cut face is uneven and it is meant to be. Muscle bundles of different colours sit side by side, separated by thin lines of fat and connective tissue, the opposite of the uniform slice a prosciutto gives and the first thing telling you which of the two you bought. The colour runs from red to dark red, deepest towards the outside. The fat is white and should stay on the slice, since it is sweet and carries the aroma; the connective veins should be thin and translucent, and thick white ones that stay chewy mean bad trimming.

On the nose expect damp cellar, noble mould and earth over the cured meat, with wine and garlic underneath; a clean, neutral smell points to ageing in a climate-controlled chamber, correct but less interesting. The texture is soft with sinew behind it. Hard, and slices that snap, means it aged too long or too dry; slippery and slack means a long spell in vacuum. Look on the label for the comune: Sissa, Palasone, San Secondo, Roccabianca or Colorno. Do not confuse it with the cooked spalla cotta from the same town.

In Italy, buy from producers in Sissa Trecasali, Palasone, San Secondo Parmense, Roccabianca and Colorno, or from delicatessens in Parma. A whole boned piece runs 28 to 42 euro per kilo at source; sliced at a counter, 45 to 60. That is roughly half the price of culatello of the same age, which is the strongest argument for it.

Outside Italy it is scarce. When US importers list it, expect 34 to 48 dollars per pound; in the UK, 48 to 65 pounds per kilo through Italian specialists. European buyers do best ordering vacuum-packed pieces directly from Bassa producers.

When buying, look for the town on the label and for a cut face that shows several muscle groups and fine seams of fat. A perfectly uniform slice suggests a leg product sold under the wrong name.

Sissa Trecasali and its hamlet of Palasone, where the most traditional version is made, and San Secondo Parmense, the shoulder town proper, whose annual fair, held between late August and September, is dedicated to the cooked version.

Along the culatello road through Roccabianca, Zibello, Polesine Parmense and Busseto, every trattoria puts spalla on the board next to culatello, fiocco and strolghino. The whole circuit is about twenty kilometres and makes an easy day out from Parma.

Busseto and Roncole are Verdi country: his birthplace, the small theatre named for him, and a few kilometres away at Sant'Agata di Villanova sull'Arda the villa where he lived for fifty years. Eating spalla and fried dough after the visit is what everyone does, and it is the right instinct.