Jamon It Up

When Australia lifted its ban on selected imported cured meats almost 18 months ago, there was a predictable rush for the top cut - jamon from Spain.

There are now few high-end restaurants without at least one dish with jamon and provedore Simon Johnson is selling retail packs "by the truckload". People are travelling across Sydney to buy it at Terry Wright's Gourmet Meats in Randwick, where there can be lively debates over personal preferences for Spanish serrano over Italian proscuitto.

"The Spanish companies have been ecstatic with the response," owner Clayton Wright says. "More producers have come into the market. It's going very well and we are starting to come into the ham season."

In Spain, jamon is eaten at lunch, dinner and as a midnight snack. Each Spaniard consumes more than 5 kilograms of the ham annually. A jamon, depending on its quality, is aged for between seven and 40 months. During that period the leg loses more than one-third of its weight and develops a coating of fungus that transforms the flavour of the flesh. Some Spanish jokingly describe the process as somewhere between "mummification and transubstantiation". Jamon is so appreciated it is given as a gift to curry favour and used as a low-level bribe.

Since Australia allowed its importation, eight Spanish jamon producers have exported more than 12 different types of jamon and paleta (cured foreleg). These range in price from about $80 a kilogram for jamon serrano to more than $600 a kilogram for jamon iberico de bellota. The only difference between what the Spanish eat and what is sold in Australia is that our imported jamon is sold with the bone removed.

Ninety percent of Spanish jamon is serrano. This is a commercial product often made from factory-farmed pigs. Jamon serrano should have an attractive nose, deep pink-red flesh, firm texture and a balance on the palate between salty and sweet.The remaining 10 per cent is jamon iberico, made from the peninsula's indigenous Iberian pigs, the majority of which are black. These pigs produce flesh with seams and veins of delicate fat that interlace the muscles, leading some to describe the pigs as "porcine wagyu". This fat allows the flesh to cure without drying out and gives the jamon its luscious, silky mouth feel.

The hallmark jamon, jamon iberica de bellota, must meet strict criteria. Iberian pigs about 12 months old are moved onto the dehesa, the oak forests that cover 2.5 million hectares of south-west Spain. For four months, the pigs lead a supervised free-range existence, consuming up to 10 kilograms of grass, acorns, insects and other small wildlife and wandering up to 8 kilometres a day.

The oil-rich acorn diet and exercise helps the fat interlace the flesh and gives it a nutty flavour and a texture that can range from rich and luscious to lean, minerally and silky. This jamon can command prices in excess of $1000 a kilogram.

Breed and feed are essential to create jamon's unique flavour, as is the curing process. "Elevation is an essential part in the curing of all jamon," explains Julio Revilla , known in Spain as Senor Jamon. He is the president of Consorcio de Jabugo, one of the leading jamon producers in Jabugo, a jamon-producing town 700 metres above sea level near the country's southern border with Portugal.

He explains that jamon iberico is aged for about three years, during which time the flavour concentrates and the flesh darkens and hardens. "Here our winters are cool and wet and the summers hot and dry," he says. "These climatic variations allow the salt to migrate towards the centre of the jamon and then migrate outwards again. The salt preserves the flesh but during this period many things are happening. Enzymes are changing the flesh and indigenous microflora from our region are growing on the outside."

The drying rooms are open to the mountain air. This allows four harmless types of penicillium and two aspergillus moulds to penetrate the flesh, creating a flavour that is unique to each Spanish region. "This is why you can cure pork anywhere in the world," Revilla says, "but only in Spain can you make jamon."

This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2007/11/05/1194117931043.html