No, the name is not misleading. While the term does sound an awful lot like the familiar “mortadella,” “mortandela” from Trentino is something completely different. It is, however, a highly prized cured meat present on every respectable tasting board found in Trentino. But in 2016, it had the misfortune of ending up in the middle of a culinary controversy.
What happened? Simply put: Slow Food, which had classified mortandela as one of its most prized Presidia products, decided last August to “suspend” it, along with luganega sausage. The reason? The organization confirmed that, in some cases, the pigs used to produce this product came from outside the province. So where did they come from? They were born and raised in the nearby regions of Lombardy and Veneto – not in some faraway land, for goodness’ sake.
Mortandela from Venetian and Lombard livestock
The response from the Consorzio Trentinosalumi (Trentino Salumi Consortium), however, was quick to follow: Although the pigs may come from the two neighboring regions, luganega, mortandela, speck and carne salada are “genuine” Trentino products. “In Trentino, we don’t have enough breeding farms. To be precise, there are only three in our province and, on an annual basis, they have the capacity for a week’s production of cured meats,” explained Loris Largher, president of the Consorzio Trentinosalumi, which brings together 15 companies in the industry under a single brand, from the most famous and well-known butchers in the area to lesser known local entities. The case of mortandela and other cured meats from Trentino may remind you of the similar predicament faced by bresaola from Valtellina and speck from nearby Alto Adige. The difference being that with mortandela, there’s no need to turn to South America or the rest of Europe. The meat used is 100% Italian, and found just a stone’s throw from the Trentino border. “The farms we source from are almost all on the southern border of Trentino, in the area of Lessinia, which is located in the province of Verona. We also buy from farms in the provinces of Brescia and Mantua. Last year we processed about 40,000 pigs, or over 13 million pounds of meat.”
Mortandela: how it’s made and eaten
Let’s take a closer look at this mortandela, which more specifically comes from the Non Valley. It’s a smoked pork product (shoulder, belly, jowls and leg, sometimes including the heart and lungs on rare occasions) shaped like meatballs weighing nearly half a pound each. The mixture, flavored with spices that aren’t too strong, is not encased; rather, it’s left to dry on wooden boards sprinkled with a layer of buckwheat or corn flour. After 12 hours, it’s then smoked and aged for a short period of time, usually between one week and one month. Like speck, there is also a cross between the Italian tradition of salting and the German tradition of smoking. Mortandela can be eaten raw or cooked, in this case paired with polenta, potatoes, sauerkraut, or boiled vegetables such as dandelion.
Any relation to mortadella?
In the past, families from the Non Valley used to buy a piglet on All Saints’ Day and feed it for a year with potatoes, bran, vegetable scraps, and hay. The term mortandela comes from the Italian word mortaio (which means “mortar,” which was once used to grind the mixture): despite its appearance, it seems to have little in common with both the Emilian mortadella and the liver mortadella varieties from Piedmont and Lombardy. In fact, mortadella comes from the Italian word for myrtle (mirto), a popular spice used especially in Roman cuisine before being overthrown by pepper.
Photo by Trentinosalumi.it