Usually the links to great journalism, or books worth reading, or art exhibitions, etc. on this site are left to to the group as a whole, and under the name Raxa Collective we share things like the video you can click through to on the image above.  The text below will introduce you to that particular video.

But in my own voice, I urge you to pick up a real copy or click through to browse virtual portions of this week’s New Yorker magazine.  For however many years they have been producing a “food issue,” a theme which (in the world we live in) could be tasteless but in this magazine almost never is, I think this year’s is the best yet.  And this little video+writing piece is a good sample (Mimi, you have been much loved in our home and you always will be):

There are very few sausage- and salami-makers left in New York City, and presumably only one with “Swami of Salami” printed on his business cards. Cesare Casella is the executive chef at Salumeria Rosi, on the Upper West Side, where he cooks sausage and conjures up closely guarded formulas for gourmet cured meats. Casella said that cooking sausage brings him back to his childhood in Lucca, Italy, where he raised pigs as pets and then ate them. We sat down with him to see how sausage is made at his restaurant, and find out why so many people are so obsessed with his luscious links. Mimi Sheraton wrote about her obsession with sausage and salami in this week’s magazine.