This pork sausage is typical to Pennapiedimonte, a small village set on the slopes of Mount Majella, in the Province of Chieti, and is made with lean shoulder and leg (70%), with the remaining part comprising fattier or semifat meat like lean belly meat.
Before being used, the shoulder is stripped of the tendinous fibres, of which it has a large amount, as well as the soft fatty tissue. Suitable amounts of lean belly meat, which retains a hard layer of fat attached to the lean area, are added to achieve the right tenderness for the sausage.
To make the product, the selected meat must first be minced to a largemedium  grain,  mixed  with  salt  and  ground  pepper, and  with  potassium nitrate  and  L-ascorbic  acid,  to  achieve  a  regular,  well-blended  mixture before being cased in the natural pork intestine. 
Before being taken to a room heated by a beech-burning fire for maturing, the sausage is carefully dried with alternating hot and cold air. 
When the salami has dried, it is covered with a paste made with pig fat, salt, ground black pepper and aromatic herbs typical to Pennapiedimonte foothill territory: thyme, juniper, rosemary, bay leaf, chives, chilli pepper, fennel and sage.
The local residents and butchers will provide information about this particular traditional product, whose recipe has been handed down from father to son for generations. The simplicity of the ingredients used, typical in a poor rural community (home-grown pork and local spontaneous herbs), mean that this type of production has spread and continued over the years.

L.T. 19-01-2021