If
salami is the blog
of cured meats, then prosciutto is the great novel. A salami requires anywhere
from 20 to 120 days to cure, making it popular with chefs who want to put their
house-made stamp on a rustic appetizer. But the best prosciutto requires 8 to
24 months to transform the salt-covered hind leg of a pig into a $35-per-pound
luxury, a rosy meat that, when thinly sliced, is a complex, faintly salty
delicacy that dissolves into richness on the tongue. It is nothing short of a
miracle.
Its a leap of faith, Paul Bertolli,
the expert behind Fra Mani salumi, acknowledged
with a laugh. Known for his artisanal cured meats, he has yet to make
the leap to prosciutto. Space, time and, as he put it, all that money
hanging up in the air are daunting barriers.
Prosciutto has
been made on the Italian peninsula since the time of Caesar. Traditionally the legs
are hung after the November slaughter and left to mature throughout the
seasons. Careful attention is paid not only to the breed and weight of the
pig but also to the way the leg is boned and trimmed, the type and amount of
salt applied and the aging, cleaning and sealing processes, all of which must
be undertaken at just the right time, under favorable temperatures and
humidity. It takes skill to ensure the meat doesnt
rot; texture and flavor require artistry. Today in Parma, Italy,
there are schools and trade groups dedicated to the science of the ham.
Knowledge aside, you still have to wait an awfully long time before you can
taste if what youve made is any good.
Nine years ago,
Herb Eckhouse, then a 50-year-old Des
Moines seed-company executive whod been based in Parma, got a glimmer of
what hed like to do with his early retirement. He was eating prosciutto in
Parma with a
friend who said, You know, if you make something
this good, youre going to make a lot of people happy. A ham-shaped
light bulb went off, Eckhouse recalled.
For years, he
imagined making good food in Iowa.
It was clear that we had this incredible bounty around us, but we werent known for creating great stuff to eat, he
told me, stretching his rangy frame at his dining room table. (Clearly things
have changed: his wife, Kathy, was serving us apple pie whose heartbreaking
crust was made with lard rendered from acorn-fed organic Berkshire
pigs, their latest project.) At the beginning of the 20th century, Iowa fed people. And
here we are in the 21st century, and were feeding machines. Its just a priori wrong. He continued: People
were saying, Iowas dying, and theres no value added here.
At that point I was thinking, Gosh, I wonder if we can make prosciutto in Iowa.
In 2001, La Quercia (oak in Italian) was born. Eckhouse, a Harvard social-studies
major in the 60s, spent four years studying prosciutto-making. The couple
would move their Volvo wagon out of the garage to weigh and salt legs, then age
them in their guest bedroom. The first official prosciutto was shipped from
their state-of-the-art plant near Des
Moines in September 2005. Early on, the food writer Jeffrey Steingarten declared
it the best prosciutto domestic or
foreign he had tasted.
The Eckhouses are determined to not make an Italian facsimile.
They might be advised by a consultant in Parma,
but they call their product prosciutto Americano. (Technically it is closest to
a prosciutto addobbo: Its the culaccia
plus the fiocco
without the stinco, Eckhouse
clarified in his warm, intelligent manner, explaining that the smaller size
requires less aging time.) Their pork is sourced and slaughtered within 200 miles
of their plant, and their cutting and curing techniques have been developed
through much trial and error.
One of the
things in the U.S.
is we dont have the thousands of years of tradition of making prosciutto or of making anything, Eckhouse said. But we have a much broader perspective.
I feel like for the guys in Parma,
theyre somewhat limited in what they can do to make the product
better.
Without those
restrictions, the cured meats sold by La Quercia can
represent the Eckhouses sense of Midwestern terroir.
We have more pigs than people in Iowa, said Kathy, who handles the
companys bookkeeping and some sales, helps salt the 730 hams that arrive
weekly and draws upon her food-savvy upbringing in Berkeley, Calif., and Europe
in her role as chief culinary officer. Herb pointed out that corn and soybeans,
the states biggest crops, are the best feed for pigs, according to Parma scientists. La Quercia also reflects the couples political values:
they require that the pigs be humanely raised and free of subtherapeutic
antibiotics. You see that the quality of the meat comes from the
quality of life of the animal and the quality of the feed, Herb said.
One result is that perhaps only 2 percent of the pigs killed in Iowa are candidates for
La Quercia: Were this little fringe.
But
theyre gaining an influential following. The silken-textured,
nutty-sweet prosciutto is named on menus from A16 in San
Francisco to Blackbird in Chicago,
from Otto in Manhattan to Central Michel Richard
in Washington, D.C. The La Quercia
range, sold in Whole Foods, has expanded to include organic and heirloom
prosciuttos, as well as lardo, pancetta, speck, coppa, guanciale and an annual
Acorn Edition, in which subscribers pay $3,000 to receive all the parts of the
prized acorn-fed organic Berkshire meat during
the year, from fresh to cured. (Paul Bertolli raved about the Acorn Edition meat, saying,
Ive never had anything that good in Italy.)
The plant recently expanded, too, to allow for longer aging.
Someday, Eckhouse would love to sell prosciutto in Italy: Not
because I think were better, but because we have
ours, too. Iowa,
it seems, now has something to bring to the global table.