Editor's note: On Thursdays, Babbo pastry chef Gina DePalma checks in with Seriously Italian. After a stint in Rome, she's back in the States, channeling her inner Italian spirit via recipes and intel on delicious Italian eats. Take it away, Gina! Alto Adige is Italy’s northern-most province, anchored by the cosmopolitan city of Bolzano, sharing a long border and a powerful cultural connection with neighboring Austria. Also known as Südtirol, or South Tyrol, the land fluctuated between Austrian and Italian control at the turn of the last century, finally becoming part of Italy after World War I. Speck is the most treasured food product of the Südtirol, a distinctly flavored, smoked, cured ham that represents well the character of Alto...
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Seattleites and fans of cured meat everywhere: Armandino Batali has retired from his acclaimed retirement project Salumi, leaving day-to-day operations in the hands of his daughter Gina Batali and her husband Brian D'Amato, who've technically been running and making the meats since 2005. Since then, "she's trained more staff and tried to improve the efficiency and minimize the wait time in a line that often snakes around the corner of the building on Third Avenue South, between South Main and South Jackson streets. "Of course, we don't want to be too efficient," she said, "because then we wouldn't be able to talk to people." Hsiao-Ching Chou of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer says Armandino and his wife are sailing around the Caribbean...
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