“This is no ordinary salami,” says Jose Coutinho. He takes a thick fermented sausage in one of his hands, a keen boning knife in the other. “It is ventricina,” he says. “It is made from hand-cut pork belly folded through red pepper paste in the traditional Abruzzese method.” He holds a thin slice to the light. It’s like a tiny pane of stained glass – a translucent mosaic of meat, deep red and pink shapes ringed by red paste and flecked with pale fat. Its scent is complex: fruity, musky, spicy, all underlaid with the sweet punch of pork. On the tongue it has a mouth-filling savoury quality, a subtle saltiness and a clean-finishing lactic tang. Coutinho beams with pride. The demand for this Portuguese-born smallgoods-maker’s products has been so great that he recently moved his San Jose Smallgoods operations to a larger factory, in Newton near the Adelaide Hills. “Australians have found a new passion for quality smallgoods,” he says.
