Of sausage and cured hams

A particularly tasty article on cured meats in the special Holidays issue of The Economist.

We had prosciutto for the Christmas dinner, in its routine cantaloupe-wrapper usual presentation. I also really like prosciutto in my sandwich bought at the Italian bakery outside my workplace. The last saucisson I had was probably in July 2005, in HK. Quebec-made saucisson are typically too sour, which is probably a consequence of some food regulation asking for saucissons marketed here to be lower than a certain pH, in order to protect the consumer from pathogens (but it's really the type of topic I'd want to do investigative blog-reporting). Would really want to try out authentic European-style sausage. At the same time, artisanal Chinese-style preserved hams, salted duck and sausages are also very tempting (I haven't seen a salted duck in Montreal for a while - perhaps they never existed in the first place, or are just available, err, frozen? Wouldn't that defeat the purpose of curing...).

However, French saucisson is the single type of preserved meat which I am the most fond of. I remembered having some in a butter-filled sandwich at a branch of a sandwich chain on Les Champs-Élysées in 1992 (that was before Subway's invaded the world with its insipid, soggy, pinkish, pre-cut meats), but usually, it comes smuggled in the luggage of a visiting relative. It is at its best when perfectly dry, with a fair dotting of fat peas, and the casing covered with a thick white coat of mold. Well, if I didn't want to go to Asia so badly, I'd certainly be going to France to burn some Euros on marketplace and bistro food.