Salchichón de Vic

Salchichón de Vic is Catalan, from the plain around Vic in Osona, and it is a pale, peppered cured sausage, not a red one. Lean pork, firm back fat, salt, black pepper, and slow drying. No pimentón, the red paprika that belongs to chorizo. That is what makes it Vic and not another sausage wearing the wrong name.

The method that decides it is the dry cure. Keep the meat nearly freezing, weigh the salt and Cure #2, use a proper starter culture, then hang the filled sausages in cool, humid air until they lose 35 percent of their weight. Dry too fast and the outside hardens while the centre stays soft. I won't tell you to dry raw pork on a kitchen counter. That's not tradition. That's a risk.

If you're far from Catalonia, no hace falta haber pisado España. Buy llonganissa de Vic when you can, or a Catalan fuet or secallona if that is what you can find; they are thinner and drier, but they keep the same peppered family. Slice it thin on the bias, let it lose the refrigerator chill, and put it down with pa amb tomàquet, bread rubbed with tomato and oil. The margin in my notebook says, 'pésalo, no lo adivines,' because in curing, guessing is not romance. Siempre sale, si lo sigues.