Stephencooks

I stopped in down the street at Browne Trading the other day to pick up some housegifts (I chose 4-ounce cryopacs of the cold-smoked Scottish salmon Browne produces in partnership with Daniel Boulud -- a perfect gift, in my view) and of course spent a few minutes browsing in their cases and shelves for interesting ingredients for my own kitchen. A healthy chunk of Speck Alto Adige  -- a product that until recently wasn't authorized for import into the U.S. -- caught my eye and subsequently left with me. This pizza is the first chance I've had to use it.

Speck production is an 800-year-old tradition in Bolzono, the German-speaking Italian town in the Süd Tirol region (Alto Adige in Italian) in the southern Alps, and a glorious product it is. The website Italianmade.com says "the term speck became part of popular parlance only in the eighteenth century and replaced the older term bachen, a relative of bacon. Speck is a pork product made from a boned ham that is moderately salted and seasoned, cold-smoked and then well aged according to local practices and traditions. The exterior of a slab of speck is brown, while the inside is red with whitish-pink areas. Speck has a strong smoky and zesty scent. During the salting process, the meat is flavoured with black pepper, pimento, garlic and juniper berry which lend it a distinctive and savoury taste." More information about speck is found at www.speck.it, the site of the Süditiroler Consortium which protects and controls the production and marketing of genuine speck.

All that history and marketing talk aside, speck is a wonderful addition to all sorts of dishes, bringing a more refined taste than pancetta, a little more robust flavor than proscuitto, and a slightly firmer and finer-grained texture than Virginia ham, so having this chunk in my refrigerator (wrapped in a cloth) makes me very happy. This pizza, for example -- ordinary in all other respects, with its tomato, garlic, olive oil, basil, mozzarella and parm -- becomes special with the addition of the speck.