/ Our magazine / Tastasal, a Veronese delicacy on your plate.
/ Our magazine / Tastasal, a Veronese delicacy on your plate.
The tastasal, a dialect term that in Italian is called tastasale, is nothing but a mixture of fresh ground pork, salted and flavored with abundant coarsely ground black pepper. Its texture is crumbly, breaking apart at the touch, and its color is a bright pink. Its strong and intense flavor is enhanced by a pleasant aroma of cloves, cinnamon, garlic, and rosemary that makes this meat particularly inviting. In past centuries, the housewives of the Veronese plain would prepare risotto with tastasal to taste the salami mixture before stuffing it. From this check comes the name of the condiment: tastare, meaning to taste the salting of the pork, from which the dialect term tastasal is derived. Let’s discover together the origins of what is a true typical Venetian dish, a real tradition of Verona that you should not miss if you happen to pass through the city of Juliet and Romeo.
In agricultural economy, the pig and polenta ensured the minimum living, survival: “el mas-cio l’è la musina de na fameia,” said Dino Coltro, the famous historian and scholar of Venetian popular customs born in the Lower Veronese area. What does Coltro’s phrase mean? Simply: “The pig is the piggy bank of a family.” When families were large and food was scarce, the days in the countryside dedicated to the slaughter of the pig were a sort of big party! There was a lot of work behind all of this, but at the same time, people were happy because they knew that for a while, they would eat more than usual. Supervising all the operations was usually the elderly mother of the family; she, knowing well the tastes of her family members, decided the level of seasoning, whether to add garlic or not, the amount of pepper and various spices. So, she was responsible for “tasting” the salt, trying the recipe to find the right one. This means that tastasal does not have well-defined quantities in its artisanal production; each recipe is carefully guarded by its creator and passed down to relatives to carry on the tradition.
To make a great Risotto with Tastasal, few things are needed: a mixture of pork, vialone nano rice, and an excellent broth.
Ingredients for 4 people.
350 g of vialone nano rice
200 g of Tastasal
1 l of meat broth
50 g of butter
60 g of grated grana
1 sprig of rosemary, cinnamon
White wine to taste
Salt and pepper to taste
Bring the previously prepared broth to a boil in a pot. Add the rice and wait for the broth to come back to a boil, gently stir the rice, cover with a lid, and let it cook on minimum heat. In a separate pan, flavor the butter with rosemary, remove the rosemary, and add the tastasal, cooking it and sprinkling white wine over it as desired. After about 12 minutes of cooking the rice, add the meat, cover, turn off the heat, and seal the lid with a cloth to prevent steam and flavors from escaping. Let it all rest for 4 minutes. Uncover, add the grated grana and sprinkle with cinnamon, mixing gently. Your risotto with tastasal is ready. Enjoy your meal!
Now you know how to make a great risotto with tastasal, but this fantastic product can also be used to create other delights. Some use the tastasal or tastasale, as you wish, to make a ragù to pair with pasta: from lasagne to rigatoni, passing through the penne or spaghetti, this ragù will delight you. There are also those who grill the tastasal, perhaps in place of a sausage in an excellent barbecue. The fundamental thing in all of this is to use quality tastasale, like the one proposed by Spaghetti & Mandolino: only the best delivered directly to your home. We recommend the tastasale by Corrado Benedetti, in a 500-gram format for those who want to make a good stock to use on special occasions or whenever the craving strikes!
Francesco Scuderi
S&M
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