Where rare beef meets gourmet ham
IN Madrid, a sightseeing group was ushered into the curiously-named Museo del Jamon, a shop which immediately reminded me of the English Market in Cork.
You could get great coffee and wine and, seated outside, be served with tapas, the final course (of seven) being a piece of tender sirloin. It was a warm evening and a cool beer washed it down.
But the Museo, or Museum of Ham, was a showpiece store — there is a chain of them — with a superb display of food which could be sampled under groaning racks of great hams of varying sizes and prices, for ‘jamon iberico’, a specialist product, can be very expensive.
There could be a €300 price tag for a pure-bred Iberian ‘bellota’ or ‘pata negra’, nourished in open countryside on acorns, fruits and wild herbs. The ‘black pig’ is of serious value and, along with some lesser important fellows, is protected by quality codes. Four colour bands are used: black for pure Iberians that have munched on acorns and apples in open landscapes; red for cross-breeds that have also foraged; green for grazing cross-breeds and white for pigs fodder-fattened in enclosures.
Many Irish visitors have sampled the wafer-thin slivers of this porcine delicacy, though it may not be to everybody’s taste. We are perhaps more attuned to bacon-and-cabbage and, during this festive season, ham baked in cider and cloves is more to our liking. But ‘jamon iberico’ is displayed in many Irish supermarkets, occasionally whole legs, but many are sliced and packaged so there is a demand for it.
Who would fancy some special beef in a similar style? One Spanish cattle man is hoping to tickle taste buds by offering thinly sliced ‘pata de wagyu iberico’, claimed to melt in the mouth. Wagyu? TASTE: Jamon iberico is found in many Irish supermarkets That’s the rare and very expensive Japanese beef available in some restaurants but I must confess ignorance of its deliciousness.
One Spanish farmer, Alfonso Garcia Cobaleda, from the province of Extremadura, is crossing local and international breeds of beef cattle with wagyu on his 1,000-plus acres to produce a cured beef suffused, like the pigs, with the flavours of the landscape. With salt, water and patience. he is striving for something rich and strange.
His curing process is just like the one used for the ham, the flavours from the pastures finding their way into the fat, he says. He feels this taste should appeal to northern European beef eaters. This is not cheap. Ready-sized portions sell for €120-140 per kg and whole legs, now hanging, will sell for €70 per kg. A leg of ‘jamon iberico’ can cost hundreds, incidentally.
Alfonso, who gave up his legal practice to manage the family farm, answers critics who say only ham can be called ‘iberico’. “Anything you produce in the ‘dehesa’ (pasture) is ‘iberico’ whether it is a pig, a sheep or a wagyu cow,” he is quoted as saying. He is pictured standing beside legs of beef — the surfaces moist with fat content.
I wonder, does he hope for a retail outlet in the Museo del Jamon? It would be novel. They might have to change the name of the shop, though. *Joe Kennedy occasionally reports from Spain and Portugal