Cooking Fats

Butter used to be confined to Lombardy, near the French border. Traditionally the basic cooking fat comes from beneath the pig’s skin, particularly from places without olive trees.

It is sold as salted pork fat, lardo, which keeps, or melted down, called strutto. Now in these cholesterol conscious days there is a shift to olive oil or to oil pressed from sunflower seeds, girasole.

Olive oil is the base of Southern farmhouse cookery. It is also relatively low on cholesterol and high on minerals. The further south you go, the richer and stronger it becomes.