It has now been one year since we started producing my family salami and sausage recipes in America.  We’re too busy to celebrate, but it’s fun to reflect for a few minutes on the adventures of the last year.  It started last June after we found the farms with the right hogs raised and fed in the right way. Of course, there are a few steps between the farm and the salumificio and bridging that gap was not easy.  The only solution we could find was to produce in a small, old slaughterhouse in Ogden, Utah with a processing room.  We did all the work ourselves, hoof to hang.

The salamis posed an additional problem since we couldn’t cure at the slaughterhouse.  Instead, we’d stuff and hand-tie the salamis and then transport them in large coolers loaded in our old white van with the blue hood (affectionately referred to as the “meat vagon”) and take the hour-long trip down to Tony Caputo’s Market in Salt Lake City where we kept our small curing cells.  We would sell the salamis as fresh sausages to Caputos and “mentor” them through the curing process so that legally they were cured and sold at retail. (That’s as much as I can say about that.)

The first salamis were ready and they were only okay.  We didn’t like the salt we had used and they dried a little quickly in Utah’s desert air.  The second production was a marked improvement – we found just the right salt and we made some adjustments for Utah’s particular climate.  The third production was…well…exciting.  I was able to prove what I already knew: you can make good salami anywhere, but you make it differently everywhere.

At the end August, we upgraded in a big way – a newer shared facility, a larger processing room and a second room where we could put our curing cells.  We were now under one roof, which was good since days earlier the meat vagon had conked out, coasting into the Caputo’s parking lot propelled by sheer will to get that salami into the curing cells before they got warm.  We had also found a pork supplier that would take and box the pork from our favorite hogs and deliver them right to us.  That allowed us to use only the exact cuts we needed marking another improvement in the product.

We thought we would be in this facility a long time.  Production was in full swing and the salamis continued to improve with every batch.  They were every bit as good as the ones my family makes in Italy, but with a few variations making them distinctly American.  We attended the Fancy Food Show in January and presented them outside Utah for the first time.  The response was exciting.  The path ahead looked clear…

 …except that when we returned from the show we were told that there was no longer room for us at the shared facility.  The next two months were tough!  We found a small co-packer where we could produce our sausage and we had about 2 months worth of salami in inventory.  That gave us two months to find a new location.  It would take a miracle, but we felt one was coming.  As is typical, it came, but in the wrong place – Springville, UT an hour to the south.  We decided we had to do it or risk losing everything.  There was a bright side.  This would be our very own facility and we would not have to share with anybody.  It has since become the first Creminelli salumificio in America where I can produce at leisure and try new recipes and creations as I please.

We have adjusted well to Springville and have now been producing there for two great months.  Our old contacts from the Fancy Food Show still remember us, well some of them do, and the Fancy Food organizers have nominated our black truffle salami for the Outstanding New Product of 2008 award.  We’re also now in the process of converting the extra room at the facility into a large aging room greatly increasing our ability to produce salami.  I look forward to staying here for a while, a good long while.

Well, back to work!

Epilogue: Soon after I originally wrote this blog I was driving with my business partner on I-80 going west to Park City for an event when we passed a non-descript old, white van.  It wasn’t until I had passed it and I saw the blue hood in my rearview mirror that I realized it was the meat vagon!  We celebrated boisterously it’s resurrection for about 30 seconds.  We had left it for dead at Carmax, running away with $250 sure that they would come looking for us asking our money back.  But the meat vagon is more resilient than we imagined – back on the road and humming along, just like us.

I have now been living in America on and off for about a year.  It has always been my dream to bring my family’s recipes to America and start a company.  I love my work and I’m excited to see this dream come true.

My family already owned Salumificio di Vigliano in Biella, Italy when I was young, so I was practically born in a salumificio.  I am the oldest son so I’ve been helping my father tie the sausages and check on the salami-drying since grade school.  I would wake up early and walk through the factory before school and then after school and during the summer I would help out wherever I could.

One thing that my father began teaching me when I was still young was how to judge the progress of dry-curing salami.  I still call him on the phone from America when I have a question because he has a lifetime of experience in curing salamis.  It is a highly-developed artisan expertise that I hope to pass on to others as my father passed it on to me.

This hasn’t been an easy journey.  My wife and I have been together since middle school and have never been separated for more than a day until I took off on this adventure.  She supports me in this dream and luckily she likes to travel.  She and my daughter also look forward to getting to know the land of dreams.

I love America. It is the land of innovation and the land of new frontiers. Italy used to play this role in the world as in the case over 2200 years ago when it took a food of the Gauls – ground salted pork stuffed in natural casings and dry cured – and turned it into what we know as Italian salami.

In Italy, little has changed in the way we make artisan salami. Like 2200 years ago the quality of the salami is almost exclusively determined by the curing methods and the quality of the curing process. The most significant change has been the shift from household cellars to temperature and humidity controlled rooms that provide a more consistent environment for the curing process and therefore a more consistent end result.

Modern salami producers have attempted to speed up the production process, racing through the most important step and using potent mixes of spices to mask shortcomings in the curing process. While many decent salamis have been made in this ways nothing compares to a true artisan Italian salami that captures the full, bold, savory taste that is a result of expert artisan curing. The difference is easily distinguished.

It is with great pride that I bring my family recipes and artisan methods to America and introduce an ancient innovation of my land to the land that I admire so much.