Michael Ruhlman: The book's meant to introduce the home cook to charcuterie. It's no more difficult to cure pork belly for bacon or corn a beef brisket than marinate a steak or brine a chicken, but we're so far removed from our food sources we don't know this. That's what this book is really about. It's also filled with really cool recipes.

G: What's the easiest method and recipe in the book?

MR: I think the bacon couldn't be easier. I did a piece for the New York Times on curing bacon and corned beef, because it's so easy.

G: There are some parts of the book that remind me of Bismarck's famous quote about politics and sausages. I had no idea that there was fermentation involved in some curing practices. It make me think of fizzy meat - but I don't think I've got it right.

MR: Salami and the like are in fact fermented, a bacteria feeds on the sugars and creates a nice tangy sausage and prevents bacteria.

G: This book is thorough. How much of what's in it is the product of co-author Chef Brian Polcyn's prior knowledge, and how much was attained through trial and error?

MR: Brian has been teaching this course for years now, so most of it comes from him and his class, and from what I know and have learned. And a lot of stuff had been tested over the years, but there was always stuff to learn. For instance, recommending the standing mixer over the Cuisinart for the emulsified sausage technique.

G: Gremolata readers may not know what an emulsified sausage technique is. My general understanding from the book is that this is the process of blending fat and meat into a kind of uniform filling for sausages like bratwurst. Is that right?

MR: Exactly right. A better example is a hot dog, since some brats aren't emulsified.

G: I was going to say "hotdog", but wasn't sure if it was appropriate! I have always wondered what that stuff was!

I wasn't surprised to see Harold McGee thanked in the Acknowledgements: there's a lot of chemistry going on in these preparations. Of all the things that you learned over the course of writing the book, what surprised you the most?

MR: How incredibly powerful salt is.

G: Salt got a bad rap in the 1980s, but seems to be coming back. Still, a lot of the food in the book might not be seen a super-healthy. And most of us would be nervous about handling uncooked pork. Isn't charcuterie a little dangerous?

MR: Salt got a bad rap because our processed food is overloaded with it. Too much salt is bad for you. It's powerful. But if you eat fresh food and food that isn't processed, you shouldn't have a problem with salt.

Too much of anything is not a good thing. Charcuterie isn't meant to be gorged on. In fact it can be healthier because its high fat content means you should feel like eating less food.

Charcuterie is not dangerous--people have been doing it for thousands of years. Dry curing sausages can be dangerous if you don't use sodium nitrate (botulism comes from the word for sausage). In most cases you won't get sick from eating today's pork, raw or cooked. It was when they fed on garbage that it was dangerous. Chicken, that ubiquitous meat is far more dangerous.

One of the things I liked about learning charcuterie is it taught me so much about the way food worked, how bacteria worked, how salt worked, how protein and fat worked. If more people understood the fundamentals of charcuterie, they'd know how to cook everything; they'd know how to shop better, how to eat better.

G: One of the things about you that I think is pretty cool is that you live in Cleveland and not New York or San Francisco or one of the sort of top Gourmet Magazine food centres. What keeps you in your home town and what's food scene like?

MR: I wrote a whole book about this, House: a Memoir. The short answer is, it's my home, I know who I am here, I'm rooted here. I think America is losing a lot because of its vagabond nature.

As far as the food scene, there are a handful of really talented chefs running excellent restaurants but Clevelanders tend not to distinguish between those restaurants and PF Chang's or other chains. It hurts.

G: But that must be the same everywhere? There are probably as many fast food chain stores in San Francisco per capita?

MR: Not fast food, but higher end chains. People seem especially comfortable with them here, because of consistency and big portions.

G: I wondered of there was some significance in the fact that both you and [Michigan-based  chef] Brian Polcyn, hail from the middle of the United States and not the coasts. Is the art of charcuterie part of a more "rural" tradition that is being rediscovered outside or major centres? Or is it just a fluke and am I making something out of nothing?

MR: Interesting question I'd have to think about. There may be something to that, actually. It's a pretty farmish craft, charcuterie.

G: It's nearly ten years since you wrote Making of a Chef and in that time the profession seems to have exploded. Do you think the chef-mania and the celebrity chef phenomenon peaked, or is it steadily growing? Is this what your next book, Reach of a Chef, is about?

MR: That is exactly what the book is about. I go back to the CIA to see how changes there reflect changes in the industry, I look at some of the chefs I originally wrote about to see what's happened to them in ten years. Yes changes have been big and swift. I don't know if the phenomenon has peaked but it's definitely changing. We're moving out of the chef as artist monk in his kitchen and into the realm of branding and licensing and multiple restaurants, the chef has left the kitchen and restaurant cooking is devolving into fashion.

G: Charcuterie seems to me to be the antithesis of fashion, yet in the wake of Fergus Henderson or Hugh Fearnley-Whittingsall doing rustic things to odd parts of animals seems to be kind of hip. Where does the book fit into the gastronomic scene now?

MR: Chefs are making it hip in the chef world. Our intent was to bring this great craft back into the home kitchen to make it understandable to the home cook, to demystify it, and then revere it.

G: Finally, forgive me for this interview banality, but if you could bring only three items from the book to a desert island, which would they be?

MR: I'd bring two: pork belly and salt. If I had some water, that would be nice.