A Very Prosciutto Christmas

If my wife sees a delivery truck, she runs out the front door. It’s not that she’s anxious to get whatever is being delivered. She just wants to save the guy six steps during a busier-than-normal COVID delivery season. (She’s that nice. How she ended up with me remains one of the great mysteries of the age.)

She met him in the middle of the lawn, offering to relieve him of a rather large parcel. It was heavy, too. I could tell she wasn’t going to balance it on her hip to free a hand to open the door. So I jumped up to help her. (OK. Maybe -occasionally- being nice qualifies me to be her husband.)

It was from Beth’s sister Judy and brother Bruce.

The logo on the box was from a food company. “All right!” I said. “Irish breakfast!” Bruce and husband John relocated to Ireland some years ago. And for more than one Christmas, they sent a complete Irish breakfast, that we typically enjoyed with Beth’s family in North Carolina. Tea, soda bread, rashers, black pudding, the whole nine. Add eggs, instant feast.

We sliced the packing tape to reveal an elaborate carton, with a carrying handle, marked “product of Spain.”

Spain? Guess it’s not Irish breakfast. Spanish breakfast?

Well, kind of. Inside, we found a ham. But we’re not talking one of those cute fun-size hams that come in miniature tins at the grocery store. This was a ham. A whole leg. Porky Pig’s mother of a honkin’ Spanish ham.

It also came with hardware. Blocks of wood and iron straps and giant steel bolts. My mind’s eye assembled the parts into a torture device. What the hell? Was it Spanish Inquisition ham?

I spotted a label. Iberian Jamon Serrano.

“Holy crap!” I said. “Do you know what this is?”

“Looks like part of a pig,” Beth replied.

But not from just any pig. A coddled, loved, free-range, acorn-fed jamon pig.

Jamon is very much like Italian prosciutto. Caked in salt for a few weeks, then washed and hung to dry and cure for over a year in a purpose-built shed, high in the mountain air.

I was excited. I’d never had jamon, but had recently learned about it, thanks to the work of a Rodrigo Duarte, a Newark-based Portuguese butcher. Duarte is replicating the entire traditional curing process, using Alentejo hogs he both imports and breeds in north Jersey.

I checked the label again. It weighed seven kilos. What?! That’s 16 pounds. It’s the size of a six month old. I panicked. Sliced, Duarte’s hams go for $500 a pound. Yeah, $500. A mere $200 a pound, as a whole leg. If Bruce, John and Judy spent over $3,000 for a Christmas gift, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to accept it with a clear conscience.

A quick web search let me off the hook. Thank God. Duarte’s hams are at the apex of handmade craft foodery and command insane prices. Ours was not a $3,000 ham. Crisis, averted.

The googling also revealed the purpose of the Torquemada torture device; it’s a stand that holds the fat-encased and slippery-as-all-hell ham steady while you go at it with a long, thin knife, sharper than any barber’s razor. Also included. Pretty slick.

The cutlery is important. Like its Italian cousin, jamon is sliced paper thin and enjoyed on its own, wrapped around fruits or vegetables, with crusty bread, cheese, or cooked into tapas. Sliced, it weighs next to nothing. A quarter-pound is enough for hors-d’oeuvre for six.

That’s when I panicked, again. It dawned on me. What in God’s name were we going to do with 16 pounds of jamon. That’s enough for 50 people. Moses on a pony.

In a normal year, no problem. Every Sicilian family has an unlimited supply of cousins, nieces, nephews, cumare and other assorted and sundry kin, visiting at Christmas time. Mom’s house is a virtual Grand Central Station.

This was not a normal year. Like the actual Grand Central Station, traffic is down quite a bit, with the pandemic.

On hearing my dilemma, more than a few friends offered advice, notable for both its consistency and inaccuracy. Don’t worry, they opined. That thing will last forever, if you keep it cold. After all, every restaurant in Spain has one sitting out in the open, at room temperature.

Well meaning, but not quite. Yes, it will last months if not longer, as long as you don’t cut it. I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I think I can safely say that leaving it uncut would kind of defeat the purpose. And I don’t need a 16-pound pork fat paperweight.

The minute you crack the thing open, the clock is ticking. You’ve got to eat it all, before it becomes the biggest, nastiest, foulest-smelling lump of rotting meat you’ve ever laid nostrils on.

Fortunately, there’s a grace period. As long as you keep it cool and cut it every few days or so, it will last quite a while. Far into 2021, I hoped. That’s how the Spanish restaurants manage it. In a normal year, they serve dozens of customers daily so it never has a chance to go south.

When the family found out about it, the buzz started. I didn’t bother trying to explain the subtleties of jamon, I just told them a 16-pound prosciutto showed up at the door. Ya gotta know your audience.

“When are you going to cut it?” became the FAQ. I decided to take a crack at it Christmas day, when our much-smaller-than-average clan would gather for spaghetti and meatballs.

But I didn’t have the first clue how to cut a whole pig leg.

The Interwebs to the rescue, again. The Spaniards sell a lot of jamons to extranjeros like me. How-to videos abound. I watched the process. You basically shave the meaty bits until the ham leg begins to resemble an aircraft carrier—the flat flight deck becomes the source of small slices.

Cutting it on Christmas seemed like a good idea. But even though our COVID Christmas was smaller than usual, it was no less chaotic. I was responsible for dinner. Beth was running a Zoom scavenger hunt, reviewing photos contestants submitted of various holiday targets; Santa Claus, penguins, angels, a Christmas face mask. Plus, visits from the odd niece and nephew, standing in the sun porch to wish Mom a happy Christmas from a safe social distance.

I hauled the ham out from its hidey-hole, a chilly closet on an outside wall of the house. I cut away multiple layers of wrapping; a nylon net, a plastic shrink wrap and some foil. When I got to the fat layer, the aroma that filled the room was not exactly appetizing. It smelled like a moldy old book, forgotten at the bottom of a pig sty.

Panic number three. Was it possible it didn’t survive its 3,000 mile-plus journey? Did Amazon or UPS or who knows who store it badly? The smell brought up an even scarier question; what in hell are we going to do with 16 pounds of spoiled meat?

I peeled away strips of fat, hands trembling. It’s a ridiculously sharp knife and I didn’t want to amputate a finger. Although it would have made the photos everybody was taking a lot more interesting. Little by little, maroon bits of tender meat appeared. I had little idea what I was doing, I just kept at it. But, boy, was it slow going. I think I stood there an hour and cut about a quarter pound. I had my work cut out for me. This thing had better last to Easter if the cutting was to go this slow.

Beth was standing by with asparagus to wrap. You don’t get long, deli-counter slices with the España method, so wrapping anything is tricky. She made it work. And it was yummy.

I was busy cutting ham so I couldn’t pay much attention to the scavenger hunt. But it was obvious from her reaction that my sister, Michele, had won.

“What’s the prize?” I asked. Beth gave me a blank stare. She hadn’t thought of that.

“May I suggest, ham?” I offered.

Plates were passed, with bread, cheese and olive oil. It was met with approval. That essence of musty pig fat was in the flavor, too. It was not unpleasant and I was not disappointed. But neither was I bowled over. I figured it marked the difference between the Italian and Spanish preparation.

No time to dwell on it—hungry Italians expected pasta and meatballs. Jamon time was over. (Not that there ever was jamon time. Sicilians don’t have a clue about hors d’oeuvre. They’re either eating, or not eating. There’s no such thing as cocktail hour.)

I re-fatted the ham and put it in the Italian refrigerator; Mom’s sun porch. No fridge in the house is big enough for this dinosaur leg.

On boxing day, it told another story. It was much colder after a night in the impromptu walk-in box, which made it a lot faster to cut. And the deeper I got, the sweeter and more flavorful the meat became. Soon, I hit the good stuff. Salty, sweet, smooth and tender. Not a trace of musty. That flavor was confined to the outermost layers. If there was such a thing as ham candy, this was it. It was sublime.

Heard a lot, into early 2021:

“Where’s Sal?”
“Cutting ham.”

Every time I left the house:

“Where you heading?”
“Cutting ham.”

When I came back into the house:

“Where were you?”
“Cutting ham.”

When friends called from afar:

“What are you up to?”
“Cutting ham.”

And everybody who walks through the door gets a parting gift. Ham.

Yeah, it’s a stupid amount of work, but the rewards are about as tangible as they get; edible, in fact. And delicious. Oh, man. Will 16 pounds be enough? (Let’s just say, brother-in-law Dennis is doing yeoman’s work to put a dent in it.)

Sorry. Gotta go. If you need me, I’ll be in the sun porch. Cutting ham.

=S

TO BE CONTINUED

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