If a book about grandmothers served the purpose of not missing mine, I would look for it.

I’m usually able to manage memories, but some days, it is hard to manage their B-sides.

Yes, memories have two sides, like coins and old vinyl records.
Side A makes memories a soft dough that will rise in the oven; it is the memory of the good things we have experienced, of opportunities, of happiness past and always at hand. Side B makes you think only of what you have lost, whether people or objects. It is what breeds melancholy and turns memories into a viscous substance that holds thoughts and dreams to the ground.

Perhaps it is for that reason that, a few days ago, I looked for in the bookshelf the volume that most makes me think of a book about grandmothers: the Grandma Duck’s Cookbook. It is an Italian edition that does not exist in any other language. Flipping through its pages, I smiled as I heard the A-side of memories playing a song written with sweet words, fragrant caresses, chocolate-soaked ladles, and compelling merende.

When I got to the Viking salami, I held my breath. Suddenly and powerfully, an old memory tapped me on the shoulder as if to say I was waiting here, between the book’s pages. And I knew you would come back to retrieve me.
I closed the manual and took the phone to call my mom to ask her about the chocolate salami.

First, I tell you a story

I think it was 2005, and Grandma had long since passed away when my mom and I concluded that we were losing the memory of the flavors of the dishes of Grandma, a prolific and tireless cook. We began to write, very quietly, a long list of recipes that we didn’t want to lose, and within a couple of years, I was ready to start one of the most arduous and tiring things in my life.

I aimed to retrieve family recipes, trying them until the whole family would exclaim: I recognize it. Grandma used to make it this way.

You should know that my maternal grandmother left a couple of handwritten notebooks with her recipes, always few compared to the breadth of her repertoire, but they were all wrong. She used to cook without scales. She had everything in her head and hands.

The reconstruction of the recipes could not have been more difficult because of missing ingredients and wrong quantities.

At that time, I was very busy at work, so I cooked nonstop during my spare time. Some recipes required several trials before recognizing the original flavor.
Once I finished that work, I asked some friends to help me cook the final versions. And it was another enormous job.

Although I have recovered more than a hundred, many gaps remain. For instance, chocolate salami was not yet on the list of recovered recipes. I try to complete the list whenever the opportunity arises, sometimes even by lucky chance, as happened for the grandma’s tiramisu.

Chocolate salami was missing from the list of recovered recipes. I finally filled the gap!

The Slow Food Dictionary to Italian Regional Cooking assigns the recipe to Emilia-Romagna, Piedmont, and Veneto, where you can also find it as dark salami because of its color.
It is also popular in Sicily and Tuscany.

I recently shared on the blog the recipe for a savory salame matto (fake salami) typical of the Easter table.
So I thought that this, another recipe that refers to the Easter table and a different preparation from the one evoked in the name, should find a place among the virtual pages of my cooking journal.

Along the Via Emilia, chocolate salami is a typical recipe of the Easter season. Today, many people use to make it after Easter to recycle egg chocolate. But that habit is very recent.

The salami chocolate origin is uncertain, and this is the first time I am not interested in finding it. It is a typical homemade preparation, and I believe its origin is to look for in the cupboards of all the grandmothers of Italy.

Nonna’s chocolate salami

Mom told me Grandma used to make chocolate salami by first whipping soft butter with powdered sugar. Then she would add bitter cocoa and not melted chocolate, a capful of Marsala and not rum, lemon zest to enhance the chocolatey taste of the cake and one egg.
Marsala and lemon zest I did not remember among the ingredients, so I thanked Mom, who is always happy when she knows I’m working on a Granny recipe and set to work. Fortunately, Mom remembered another relevant detail: cookies, cocoa, and sugar have the same amount.

For once, it was not difficult to reconstruct her flavor.

Chocolate salami was also the dessert of many of us children’s parties.
It was a feast seeing it on the buffet table, sliced neatly arranged on a plate between pizzas and stuffed sandwiches.
When the chocolate salami was for an occasion where adults were also present, a large bowl of whipped cream served on the side was never missing.

From the recipe, I eliminated the egg. If you add it, choose very fresh eggs or proceed with pasteurization.

You can replace 100 g of butter with the same amount of melted dark chocolate.

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