"The press used to call Prodi mortadella.
Warmed, velvety soft, freshly sliced mortadella (£5) is a tongue-coating heart-stealing treat, while a plate of pink culatello (£7) is a delicate, dreamy hit.
Having spent weeks at the Mina San José sharing the hopes and fears of the entombed miners' families, the minister of mining has demonstrated that he can, as one Chilean commentator remarked, eat a mortadella sandwich with anyone without being thought of as a poseur.
Drain off the porcini, reserving the oil, and arrange on the ciabatta with the mortadella, folding it so it sits proud, not flat, on the bread.
It could have been made for the gutsy rigatoni with pork sausage (£10), the coarsely packed zampone (stuffed pig's trotter, £11) or the darling little polpette meatballs (£6.50) of veal, pork and mortadella.
After that, I was to spoon little piles of salami stuffing – made up of mortadella, butter, sage and sausage meat – inside.
One of the best sausages I've eaten was in Italy, sliced from a peppercorn-studded, rose-pink pork mortadella that weighed two hundred and seventy-one pounds and was nearly five feet long and eighteen inches wide.
Europe for me is governed by the price of mortadella.
The tortellini was stuffed with mortadella (a very Bolognese ingredient), mixed with turkey, parmigiano, and nutmeg.
The Biellese factory, in Hackensack, turns out French and Italian cured meats, including mortadella that is credible if not quite as magically supple as the imported kind.
The finocchiona is one of Italy's best, along with the mortadella I enjoyed in Gradisca d'Isonzo, and the hunters' sausages, the wild-boar cacciatorini.
