Pancetta is Italian salt-cured pork belly — the same fatty cut as bacon, but cured with salt, black pepper and spices and, in the classic Italian style, never smoked. It comes two ways: arrotolata, rolled into a tight pink-and-white spiral and sliced into pinwheels, and tesa, left flat as a seasoned slab. Diced and rendered slowly in a pan, it melts into a savoury, fatty, deeply umami base that carries carbonara, amatriciana and countless Italian sughi; sliced thin, the rolled kind is eaten cold as a salume. The name comes from pancia, the belly.