In an artisanal sausage, the ingredients can be counted on one hand, and there are usually some left over. They are meat, salt, and spices. Industrial sausages, let's call them that because the law allows them to be differentiated from artisanal ones, contain more additives, including lactose, which on the ingredient list of the cured meat can be mentioned as whey,milk powder, lactitol or directly lactose, explains dietitian-nutritionist Anna Grífols.

I interview the butcher Próspero Puig on the day that The ARA newspaper celebrates fifteen years since it published its first issueThe day that the Greek-Swedish writer Theodor Kallifatides She will win the newspaper's first international prize. I also tell her that we've known each other for fifteen years, and even longer. I ask her name, which is lovely, and she tells me it's as old as the writer William Shakespeare, who used it in the play The storm"Did you see Lluís Soler playing Prospero in the production directed by Oriol Broggi at the Library of Catalonia?" I tell him yes, I went to see the play. And then we start talking about Prospero's trade and passion: cured meats and pork. Until last September, he used to come to his own delicatessen, located in the Sant Andreu neighborhood, but he's sold it. In the interview, we focus particularly on a topic he always brings up when he sees me: the school cafeterias in Barcelona, ​​which don't offer cured meats or pork. He also expresses his concern about swine fever.

"Heenfant terrible "Of the cured meats," the food journalist Carme Gasull described him when introducing him. Xesc Reina is one of the most renowned charcuterie makers. He's Catalan, but has been based in Mallorca for years, where he has become famous for his sobrasada. His sobrasadas are so famous that the restaurants that serve them always "add" it—it's become a mouth-watering enticement. Similarly, the larger pieces are also displayed in many establishments, because you'll inevitably end up ordering them. Chefs like Rafa Panatieri and Jorge Sastre of Sartoria Panatieri, Marc Ribas or Rafa Peña, from the Gresca restaurantReina is a virtuoso of sausages, but also a headline-generating machine: "for us, sobrasada is a necessity", "in Mallorca a black pig is a walking sobrasada" or "each pig's intestine is a container".

Rome's delicatessens are like Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel. Full, colorful, tightly packed, with intense smells and long lines to get in. The comparison, Stefano Paciotti of the salumeria Paciotti, while he cuts me porchetta (pork cooked in the oven with aromatic herbs) to make me a sandwich. salumeria Paciotti isn't far from Vatican City, and he's got the comparative phrase down pat. He's probably said it many times. In fact, he makes me look up at the ceiling to check out the wonders hanging there: hams, lungo salami (similar to longanizas but made with mixtures of pork and beef, and seasoned with garlic). And all around, shelves filled with more salami, of other varieties. Also cheeses and cakes, such as crostata (jam cake) or sponge cake (shade to the formation). The Paciotti, like all the salumerias Italian sandwiches with a thousand and one types of bread that the staff explain to you. Of all of them, I choose the focacciaThe sandwich, a good size, cost me €8.50.