This little gem is Italian bacon. I’d been buying it for years and using it in cooking, but when I moved away from pork products due to the factory-farming issue I missed it too much. So when I got my own pigs, I started making it myself. As for anything, there’s a bunch of different ways to make it, and there always seems to be someone saying their way is best, blah, blah, blah. That really puts me off being a foodie. The very thought of competition in food is a bit of a wank, really.
I don’t overdo the spice and herb mix. I’ve added fennel, dill and other dried herbs in the past, and it’s turned out well each time, but then I was limited as to how I could use it in cooking, as those herby flavours would be present. Savvy? I prefer to keep the pancetta simple, so that it’s just dry-cured belly – and that has a distinctive taste of its own anyway. I use basically the same curing process as I do for bacon, but I do add black pepper to the belly when I roll it.