continue … Meat is disgusting! It is organically dead material, causes cancer and gout and is the symbol of the fat and ridiculous opulence of the nineteenth century middle-class. Meat is bad not only for the body, but also the soul. It is all about meat, king of the table around the world, in the culinary battle, and the great preparations in all the temples of good living. Meat is the ultimate food, marvelous and politically incorrect, capable of arousing violent emotions and is, at the same time, familiar and transgressing.
Man has for centuries nourished himself, or tried to, on meat. Consequently, we are genetically carnivorous. The grand French cuisine, the ultimate cuisine, is a meat cuisine. The great chefs of the eighteenth century, after fleeing by night from the homes of the nobles, stepping over the corpses of their former employers, went to work for the Parisian community which survived the Revolution, offering to them what they had learned to make: rich food for the rich, of and with meat, great and surprising preparations.
Nineteenth century Italian cooking followed this fashion. Italy however, was poorer, therefore more imagination was required.
Today, in the Western world, meat is widely available, in fact, meats like chicken and hamburger have become the food of the less affluent sectors of humanity. However, there is an Italian style of cooking meat, which is anything but banal and absolutely autonomous.
Here as well, the available raw materials represent an important element. The meat from Piedmont is the best in the world! Its noble bovine meat enjoys indisputable fame: boiled beef, braised beef, cold meats and roasts are a marvel in this corner of Italy. Pork on the other hand holds sway in the Po Valley, while it is once more bovine meat in Tuscany, and bovine meat and fowl become organ meats, muscle, brandelli and mixed innards in central and southern Italy. In Sardinia, we once again find pork (but sheep as well, an ancient reminder of a history of sheep-raising tradition).
The entire Italian boot is studded with the production of salamis which has no equal in the world. But more about that later.

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