El Producto mas Último de Esteban Jobs: iJam
Apologies if I butchered the Spanish above.
iJam. Get it? Jamón Ibérico? [via Jason Perlow]
Link: iJam (English) [YouTube]
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Entries from Required Eating tagged with 'ham'
Ibérico Ham: Crazy Good But Worth the Price?
Jamón Ibérico has finally arrived in New York and across the country this week. Washington D.C. chef Jose Andres cut the ceremonial first slice last week.Dean & Deluca is selling it in its stores in New York, Washington, D.C., and St. Helena, California. Just call the individual stores before you make the trip to make sure it's in stock and how they are selling it. In Washington, D.C., for example, D & D is only selling whole bone-in and boneless hams at $87 a pound. The boneless ham will set you back around $400 and the bone-in ham somewhere between $1200-1400.
According to Florence Fabricant, Agata & Valentina currently has the lowest price in New York, $71.96 a pound. And if you want to buy it the way people do in Spain, that is, sliced by hand, Despana Foods in New York's Soho and Jackson Heights will do just that for $99 a pound.
But is it worth it?
Southern Foodways: Allan Benton Wins Lifetime Achievement Award
Southern Foodways appears on Fridays as part of our collaboration with the Southern Foodways Alliance, an organization based in Oxford, Mississippi, that "documents and celebrates the diverse food cultures of the American South." Dig in!
By way of this blog, the Southern Foodways Alliance seeks to introduce you to folks you might not otherwise ever encounter. While it's likely you won't ever meet Allan Benton in person, it is likely you'll encounter his ham or bacon in the finest restaurants across the country. Momofuku in New York City serves Benton's bacon. So does McCrady's in Charleston, South Carolina. You'll also find Benton's on your plate at The City Grocery in Oxford, Mississippi. Allan Benton's hams and bacon have been highlighted in Saveur, Gourmet, and, most recent, Southern Living.
This year, the SFA honored Allan with The Jack Daniel's Lifetime Achievement Award. This is the highest honor the SFA bestows. Past award winners include restaurateur and chef Frank Stitt; author and expert on the foodways of Appalachia, Joe Dabney; and author and historian John Egerton.
Mario Unclogged: The Hams of Italy
Ah, prosciutto di Parma, prosciutto di San Daniele, and prosciutto di Carpegna: three hams from three places, each with its distinct flavor and yet similar technique. In each locale, the hams are salted for 30 to 45 days and then hung in the vaulted rooms and halls to cure for as little as 400 days and as much as 3 years to achieve the delicate balance of pure porcine pleasure and the fragrance of the wind and the dew of the specific geography.
I have always found the sweetest hams to come from Friuli, (prosciutto di San Daniele), where I think that the cooler climate allows them the use of a little less salt (in fact, the only ingredient other than the pig's leg).
Parma (and its Langhirano hills) is the home of those eponymous hams that are perhaps the most famous in the world. Their specific flavors are a result of their exposure to winds blown down the valleys off the Tyrrhenian Sea from Liguria, and they help create a complex perfume unique to prosciutto di Parma.
Carpegna hams from the Pesaro Urbino region of Le Marche are perhaps the most rich and porky in flavor, a tad drier in younger ages (not a bad thing), and hard to find—legally—in the U.S.
Photo of the Day: Jamón Ibérico de Bellota
Photograph from Su-Lin on Flickr
I imagine there aren't many things more delicious than this Jamón Ibérico de Bellota — ham made from happy, acorn-fed, free-range black-footed pigs. Thanks to Su-Lin for sharing this drool-worthy photo with us in the Serious Eats Flickr Pool.
Photo of the Day: Jamón
Fulfill your dream (or nightmare) of standing before a towering wall of ham legs by visiting Museo del Jamón in Madrid.
All the Hamunition You Need
Photograph from iStockphoto.com
Joyce Gemperlein in the Philadelphia Inquirer provides fine advice for buying and cooking ham. She says the most important thing is to do your hamwork. Here's a cheat sheet (or at least the hamlights):
- Get good hamferences: Buy your ham from a butcher you or someone you trust has dealt with
- Buy bone-in ham: The bone marrow suffuses the meat with big-time flavor
- Buy a shank-end ham: It's easier to carve and has sweeter meat
Barcelona: The Ham Capital of the World
After three days in Barcelona, my family thinks I am going to turn into a ham. Not just any ham, but a jamón de bellota, made from the famous acorn-fed black-footed (pata negra) Spanish pigs.
In three days here, I have bought five different kinds of ham and ordered it for breakfast, lunch, or dinner in some form. Every morning, I go to the Boqueria and inspect the wares of the many ham vendors found at this wondrous market, which is every bit as great as advertised. I ask everyone I meet there where they buy their ham. Not many people speak English, and my Spanish and Catalan are nonexistent, so I don't really glean very much useful information from my queries.
So I'm forced to try the ham at every one that looks serious, which turns out to be every ham vendor at the market. There are at least 15 ham vendors at the Boqueria. That is why my family thinks I am going to turn into a jamón de bellota by the time I leave here. Of course if I do turn into one of these hams, I will not be allowed back into the U.S. But I might not care.
Paul Gauguin's Ham
The post-impressionist still life of a ham at right "pays homage to Cezanne and Manet while equaling both in its rigor and sensuousness," and was one of the painter Paul Gauguin's first real masterpieces, painted in 1889 before his famous move to Tahiti.
The Ham is now part of the Phillips Collection in Washington D.C., but Fine Art Prints On Demand will happily sell you a print if you'd like one for your wall.)
