The David and lardo have something in common: the Apuan Alps and marble. Although lardo is considered a real delicacy and a staple in Tuscan cooking, people tend to like and remember Michelangelo’s masterpiece more. For decades I tried to present this cured fat during my culinary events with no luck. It is just fat! It is not appealing! Sadly, all my efforts to captivate people failed. Ironiclly, as people eat in some of our most delectable restaurants, they see it in the menu as part of the antipasto or listed in the ingredients of many dishes, like pasta e fagioli for instance, or wrapped around gigantic shrimps, or on baked oysters, and my favorite, draped on a warm toasted piece of bread…the list is long. And they like it!
I grew up with bread and marble as my father owned a marble factory. Every now and then he would take me to the quarries in Carrara to select the whitest marble blocks for his works. The lunar landscape chiseled by the Apuan Alps is really something astonishing. The steep skinny road that takes up to the quarry zigzagging among the mountains, makes you feel like you are going to fall down the cliff any minute. Cars and trucks look like mountain goats, slowly and skillfully climbing up the alps. Sometimes trucks loaded with marble struggle driving down the mountain, causing never ending lines of cars behind them. I never felt safe driving up there, and still today, when I go, I relive the same fear. I always thought that the quarries were part of a completely different world, a very white one. During the Winter the temperatures there get very low and during the Summer it is like being in a blinding furnace. The view from there though is breathtaking. The sea in front of us is almost touchable. What I could see more than 40 years ago is what I will keep seeing each time I go, including the quarrymen eating bread and lardo. This was once and still is a classic lunchtime staple for them, normally paired with a glass of red wine. Their working life is one of the hardest and most dangerous and every year the quarry takes its toll. In my 30 years’ experience in tourism, I can say that a visit to the quarries does not change your life even though what is incredibly beautiful is the contrast between the hilltop area and the Alps. The white shield can be seen from the distance, rising above the green hills of Massa Carrara, like a massive wall making you wonder if what you see is snow. Geographically speaking when we mention the Italian Alps people immediately identify them with the Dolomites and Northern Italy. Nobody would ever associate them with Tuscany. When I say that Tuscany has it all I am not bragging, just stating facts. Colonnata, a tiny village nestled in the heart of the Apuan alps is the place that still today makes lardo like centuries ago. Known since the 40 BC, Colonnata has always been associated with marble carved and chiseled for the Romans and for this unique way of curing fat in marble boxes. It is common in Italy to ask for Lardo di Colonnata, the best for many gourmands, the culinary rule for every cook.
This is the reason why marble is so important to me. It is not just the prized stone made famous by so many artists, it is also the precious material used to cure lardo, so vital in many Italian recipes; it is the stone used to make mortars for pesto Genovese and rolling pins for pastry. My interest here is purely associated with cooking. Yes, because using lardo in recipes, can only improve the resulting flavor of the dish which will be more complex, hearty and aromatic thanks to the herbs and salt. If we go back to centuries or just decades ago, the people who did not have access to butter or oil because too expensive, used lardo in every preparation, including sweets.
So, what is lardo? Is it really just fat? Lardo is obtained from the pork fat back of selected Italian or local pigs. During the cold months It gets cured with coarse sea salt, herbs, a secret spice mix and then sealed in large basins chiseled from Carrara white marble. Each basin gets rubbed inside with fresh garlic and there lardo will sleep for six to ten months, covered with a white marble blanket. These huge boxes, made with the marble extracted from the Canalone, can contain up to 650 pounds of lardo divided into 36 slabs of bacon from 18 pigs and carefully alternated with salt and spice mix. During the six months of rest the ingredients and the liquid from the fat blend into a brine giving the Lardo di Colonnata IGP that unique and incomparable flavor that makes it famous in the world.
Driving up the Alps is a unique experience indeed. Visiting the quarries will give you a different prospective on marble. Watching the quarrymen at work will make you realize why marble is so expensive and rare. Moreover, driving there to stop in Colonnata for a panino with sliced lardo is the most rewarding of the experiences. Once tasted, you will never define it like just a piece of fat. But to realize all this magnificent experience you must go try it for yourself!