Good Food: Blackberry Farm Finocchiona Salume
Eating healthy should still be delicious.
By Kate Malin
In the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains sits Blackberry Farm: 4,200 acres of rich land that sustains a working farm, two restaurants, a spa, and luxurious accommodations for visitors. Focusing on sustainable harvesting and foraging, their chefs, butchers, cheese makers, and preservationists steward the land that has provided for inhabitants for generations. The bountiful Tennessee soil yields produce and livestock that the skilled producers at Blackberry Farm use to make, among other things, preserves, cheese, pickles, wine, and charcuterie.
Housed inside the whitewashed walls of the Blackberry Farm Larder is the Butcher Shop, where meat is seasoned and cured. To make their Good Food Award winning Finocchiona Salume, butchers select meat from local Black Duroc hogs, season and ferment it, then dry the salami, drawing out the final step to slow moisture loss to yield the perfect texture and flavor. Finocchiona, which gets its name from the fennel seeds and pollen studded throughout the salami, combines robust meaty flavors with floral and spice notes for a salami that pairs nicely with a range of cheeses, jams, and spirits.
Blackberry Farm Finocchiona Salume is available at blackberryfarmshop.com. Blackberry Farm is part of the Good Food Awards, a project to honor food and drink producers making the sort of food we all want to eat – tasty, authentic and responsible, and a proud member of the Good Food Merchants Guild, national association uniting American craft food businesses to connect, convene and promote Good Food businesses of all sizes.
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From her grassroots work at the Good Food Awards to her continued education at NYU’s Food Studies Master’s Program, Kate Malin brings an unparalleled passion for great food and good people.
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