Our little fun group, Joe Bersani, owner/chef at Cantine restaurant and Annie Sibonney, host of the popular Food Network show From Spain With love, Joanna Sable, Owner of Bumpercrop pickled and preserved products and myself, were invited to taste some of the products produced at Dolce Salumeria. Dolce is owned by the husband and wife team John and Paola Zagaria. John is a second generation butcher and hand crafter of the artisanal products produced by Dolce. Tony Cohan, owner of Tony's Cheese and Provisions was there to supply us with some complementary cheeses for the tasting.
Not featured in a photos, we enjoyed an exemplary Tamworth ham prociutto, cured for 3 weeks and aged for 18 months, easily as good as the best I have tasted that is supplied from both foreign and domestic sources in Ontario. Silken in texture with complex and subtle nutty flavours.
The various products produced on site are hung in 3 special refrigeration units.
After our brief tour of the production and storage facilities, we were brought to the table and presented with a sampling of their products. Dolce happens to carry some of Bumpercrop's products for their clients so we opened and tasted some of them.
On the platter below are (from the top left and going clockwise), southern style cured, mild cacciatori; chunks of sweet yellow peppers preserved in dark beer and spiked with a touch of chili, from Bumpercrop, a tasty complement for the savoury salumi; slices of the dry, mildly spicy liver sausage; guanciale, lean leg pork, moderately spicy with a slowly accelerated burn on the finish; capicollo (ossocol), pork butt flavoured with some cinnamon, cloves, garlic, salt and pepper, with a mild sweetness and mild pastrami like flavour; a wonderful cured pork loin flavoured with cinnamon, garlic and pepper, which had a silken texture (really liked this).
Tony supplied a wonderful fresh mozzarella di buffalo (bottom right), served simply with some good olive oil and bread. A roll of Nduja (far left), a coarsely textured wonderful spread for bread, made predominantly with pork jowls a variety of hot spices and pepper paste.
Veneto salame flavoured with peppercorns, garlic and cloves.
Filetto baciato, made using cured pork loin surrounded with Dolce's own Veneto Salame. This was another wonderful experience.
We took home a sampling of each of these wonderful products, the Tamworth prociutto, Veneto sopressa salami, local pork loin and the capicollo flavoured with cinnamon and clove.
I also tried Bumpercrop's very good apricot mustarda, which also went well with some of the salumi. Paola indulged us with some of her grandfather's honey grappa, a perfect finish for our tasting.
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