by Caleb McBee

In northern Italy lies quite an impressive practice, and that’s the frequent consumption of carné cruda (raw meat). I wasn’t necessarily shocked; I eat tartar and sushi, but here it feels different; it’s everywhere and everyone eats it. The casual consumption was what got me. From school cafeteria to auto grill; big chain grocer to artisan butcher has the stuff. Almost every menu I’ve come across in this region has some form of carné cruda.

The first encounter I had was Salsiccia di Bra (sausage of Bra), Bra is the name of a small town in Piedmont and the international home of Slow Food. This is a local delicacy, it’s minced Piedmontese veal shoulder with pork fat, stuffed in lamb’s intestine, mildly seasoned and consumed raw. Bovine sausage is not traditionally produced in this region but due to a Jewish community in the nearby town of Cherasco there was a demand for non-pork sausage. Originally it was lean and without the pork fat. I’m not sure when but along the way they obviously couldn’t resist and started adding fat.

The meter or more long ropes of sausage has quite a visual impact. Red ropes looped like a cowboys lasso hung on a hook or piled high, fly out of these butcher shops, these guys have weights memorized by the number of loops around their hands, and are proudly handing it off to old and young.

The skin doesn’t snap as your teeth pinch off a mouthful. The taste is mineral/metallic, fresh, bright, slightly tart, smooth and heavy on white pepper. The texture of the skin was something different but not difficult to overcome. It is served at almost every café during aperitivo. But above all was when my 3 year old daughter just jumped in and went straight for the bright cork sized piece and gobbled it up by the handful as her body just gravitated towards what it wanted.

Another typical dish is hand chopped veal served with olive oil, black pepper and shaved cheese. This is stuff is fantastic, you find a pleasant difference in coarseness and fat ratios from person to person, the hand chopping lends a lighter body than ground meat and gives you that random big chunk that gets passed over.

In a slaughterhouse near the French border we were breaking down veal, and as the Butcher was carving he sliced a thin piece off the shoulder and popped it in his mouth, savored it with glossy eyes, looked to the ceiling in contemplation, nodded his head and went back to work.

Most people in the west have seemed to develop a distaste for raw meat. It’s even seen as frightening or disgusting, or at least unhealthy. When I was a child I saw some movie about a kid who’s parents turned out to be aliens. One of the signs his mother was an alien was when she stood in the kitchen eating raw hamburger from the yellow Styrofoam tray. The scene was scary, and disgusting.

We tend to be forgetful people, always looking to the future and shedding the past. The simple pleasures of eating raw meat are a testament to a rugged and intimate engagement with our food.

Caleb McBee is the food and drink editor for High Con, as well as an accomplished chef and traveler from the Pacific Northwest.