My new friend, guanciale

Among other delights this past weekend, we stopped at The Fatted Calf store at the new Oxbow Marketplace in Napa. Theresa and Tristan waited outside with Mattie while Tom and I flirted with the cute girl behind the counter (would she be a charcuterix?)

One of the delights she introduced us to was guanciale (pronounced gwan-CHA-lay), or cured pork jowl. Definitely in the bacon family but definitely its own creature, it was mostly pure white fat, with the thinnest stripe of pink meat. She sliced it read-the-paper-through-it thin and lovingly laid it out on parchment. She suggested wrapping it around asparagus, which I thought was a great idea.

Here are the asparagus spears ready to go in the oven:

After about 8 minutes in a 400 degree oven, the asparagus was cooked and the guanciale was partly rendered so that the fat had coated all of the spears, not just the parts touching the meat:

Do I need to say that this was delicious? I didn't think so.

Oh, guanciale, the world is our oyster! What shall I wrap you around next?