Free Republic

aren Solomon’s new cookbook, “Cured Meat, Smoked Fish & Pickled Eggs: Recipes and Techniques for Preserving Protein-Packed Foods,” is, on the one hand, very Jewish. Ashkenazi Jews have been at the forefront of food preservation for generations and will appreciate recipes for gravlax, several types of herring and “Killer Smoked Fish Salad.” The book also has recipes for prosciutto made from duck, and for pastrami that Solomon considers one of her top crowd-pleasers. “People just love it,” she said. “There are certain things I make that make people really happy. Bacon tops the list, but that pastrami recipe is right...

Do the terms Prosciutto or Speck have any meaning to you? They should! True prosciutto is one of many Italian delicacies, especially that from Parma region, a kind of air-dried bacon that melts on your tongue. As common for bacon, it has small parts of fat. In the context here, “Speck” is the German term for the fat in cured bacon that makes the delicacy even smoother. You can buy the original prosciutto at high-end deli shops in the U.S., including the west coast (nothing but the finest for them, ever). IMHO, even steadfast vegetarians would savor it. Now, horror...