Ciccioli, Cicoli, Sfrizoli

When pork or goose fat is melted to make lard, the cubes of fat still contain some meat which, when pressed after cooking to extract all the lard, can be salted and kept to be eaten with bread. This is an interesting and very tasty amuse-gueule which is quite different from Anglo-Saxon pork crackling.

My mother used to make lard and we would eat the ciccioli with some bread while they were still hot and juicy. My mother took special care not to squeeze the cubes of meat and lard too hard and the result compared to those made by local butchers was like the difference between day and night. In some parts of Italy they include the ciccioli in the dough when making bread, producing a very appetising loaf called pane coi cicoli.