Mortadella!

"MORTADELLA!"

For my last post for my 49th year and my last post for this blog under the Frazzled at 40 blog title, I will be writing about a new food which I tried during this now SEMI-quarantine isolation phase of my life! I again decided to try something that I went ICK over just because of the name and the look: Mortadella.

SMELL!

I always knew mortadella was some sort of Italian cured meat. It has white, black, and green spots in it. That's all I knew. As well as the name, which in my grammatically challenged college "D" grade receiving Italian translates to "died of" (Morta Della?). I pledged my fraternity that semester. LOL. Well now I know why I received an A in college beer chugging and a D in Italian. Although ... sidebar, I got an A in Italian cinema watching Fellini movies at 7pm on a Friday night class. I think that's because we snuck in cases of beer with my fraternity bros! 

My apologies for I digress; back to the odd sounding cured meat product mortadella. 

On a whim, I decided to throw caution to the wind and buy this pork product from Italy, and luckily for Moochie Marc, it was on sale! Whaaaat? 😃

TASTE!

So with mortadella in hand, this brand by the great Italian company, Salumi Italiani, I headed home to try this interesting looking product. By the way, check out their website, it's pretty great: https://www.italianmade.com/usa/ .

The Big Ragu knew all about mortadella and was no help either way, not really having an opinion on the matter other than a harrumph and a grunt. I opened the product and first smelled it. It  obviously smelled very "PORKY."  The smell was intense, strong and a bit spicy. It has been described as silky in texture as opposed to a common bologna's rubberiness. I also found it a bit greasy which maybe that's the silkiness others talk about. 

The taste was actually GOOD. It was fresh with rustic after-tones, deep and more porky than hammy. Mine was thinly sliced like luncheon meat and was very flavorful. The green pistachios gave it a soft nuttiness. I mean, I never tried this before just based on how it looked. I was put off by the green, black, and white spots. I have now learned that if there are black spots, they are black pepper grains which add to the spiciness. The green spots are pistachios and the white spots are small cubes of pork fat. 

I APPROVE!

Wikipedia further educated me on mortadella. It is a large Italian sausage made of finely hashed or ground cured pork which incorporates at least 15% small cubes of pork fat ... and then flavored with black pepper, pistachio or myrtle berries. 

In fact. the actual product mortadella comes from the Latin word "farcimen myrtatum," made from crushing and grinding pork in a mortar. This was then cooked and flavored with spices and myrtle. The name most likely is derived from the Latin tern "mortarium" meaning mortar. 

***Thank you to Google and Wikipedia for the info above! 

Is it healthy for you? Um... well like anything else, moderation is best. LOL. With the chunks of pork fat and sodium, the saturated fat percent in a 2 oz serving if 25% of your daily intake and the sodium is 22%. BUT on the plus side, it has 9 grams of protein! During my taste test and experimentation, I ate an entire 6 oz package over the course of 2 days. Ooooops. Looks like a salad tonight...

Would I ever eat it again? Absolutely. I really enjoyed it. It would go great on a charcuterie plate with cheese and other salami products. Maybe just not in the amounts I scarfed it down. I've had my fill for a bit!