Restaurant review: La Sosta, Cremona, Italy

An hour or so from Milan, Osteria La Sosta, in Cremona, presents a terrific introduction to the solid splendours of the northern Italian table. I started with a selection of hams and salamis, most produced in house.

Among stiff competition, the highlight was the delicate, lean Culatello di Zibello. Culatello is made from the centre of a ham, which is extracted, barded with only a little fat, salted, dried, seasoned and then left to absorb the fog so prevalent in the Po valley. Left to age for 18 months, La Sosta’s Culatello had thus assimilated the vagaries of six seasons, resulting in a lovely complexity.

Proceeding from the regional to the local, I continued with Cotechino Cremonese, a fabulously rich, sticky sausage made from the scraps of meat, skin and fat discarded by other salami recipes and cooked with red wine and spices. Served with lentils, this is a treat for offal lovers.

I couldn’t resist the Renaissance gnocchi, either. In his passion to recover authentic Italian cuisine, chef and proprietor Claudio Nevi has recreated a 15th-century dish from a recipe by humanist and Vatican librarian Bartolomeo Sacchi, who, in around 1465, wrote possibly the first printed cookbook, De Honesta Voluptate et Valetudine (On Virtuous Pleasure and Health).

La Sosta’s gnocchi are made of fresh sausage meat mixed with honey and then stuffed into a casing of flour and potato. They are then drizzled with more honey and sprinkled with poppy and sesame seeds and a little Parmesan before being baked in a hot oven.

The Slow Food movement has lauded La Sosta for its cheese so we finished with a selection, the most glorious of which was Provolone Valpadana, aged for 60 months. These were accompanied by a selection of three mostardas, pieces of fruits preserved in a spiced syrup for which Cremona has long been famous.

Osteria La Sosta, Via Sicardo 9, Cremona, Italy, tel: +39 0372-456 656; www.osterialasosta.it