Finocchiona salami

Finocchiona is one of those wonderful charcuterie meats you had to cross the globe to taste. A Tuscan salami from Florence and nearby, it's secret lies in the fennel seeds that flavors it. Now, if you go to the right source, you can find it around Washington. It's worth searching for. The wine-y meat is slightly sweetened by the anise flavor of the seeds to make it a salami that takes cured meat to a higher level.

Chefs in town who take pride in making their own cured meats from scratch include the remarkable Frank Ruta at Palena who makes all his own salamis (he even makes his own hot dogs - including pickle, mustard and bun...). Sometimes he puts his hand to finocchiona. Robert Weland also has home-made salamis from his own curing room on the menu at Poste. The much missed Jamie Stachowski, whose Restaurant Kolumbia closed earlier this year, made every cured meat ever known to Poland, it seemed, in a space just outside the capital. At Sonoma Restaurant & Wine Bar, Drew Trautmann serves a full charcuterie board to be shared easily among four. It comes with a changing selection that isn't made by him but comes from a purveyor he trusts because he does know how it should taste. He used to make his own charcuterie in Seattle. The board includes finocchiona, speck, bresaola, duck salami, culatello and la quercia prosciutto, Amish chicken pate, along with little pots of salted nuts, membrillo, dried then macerated figs and pickled scallions on a large plank with toasted foccaccia. 

Wegmans sells Finocchiona artisan salami, at $12.99 a pound. It's a thinner sausage than you'll find in Italy and doesn't have the same density of flavor. Perhaps that's because of the pasteurization process that's required by law. But if you aren't flying into Italy, it's not a bad alternative.

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