Growing up in the last century as one of seven, the children of Depression era parents, we were imbued with a neurosis about wasting things. Some of us are more afflicted than others. Last week one of them contacted another of the more afflicted ones for some help.
At the very end of last year, my baby brother just married off his only child, an accomplished young doctor. The wedding was attended by their doctor friends from all over the country, and hundreds more. It was a Town & Country affair. She has traveled the world, starting in college in Barcelona for that semester abroad program, and has been smitten with all things Spanish since then.
The wedding had tapas and charcuterie, and my brother wound up with a leg of ham all to himself at the end of it. (Only fair, I don’t think he had a bite at the wedding.)
A few weeks back he sent me a pick of him and the Jamón Serrano he discovered in the refrigerator that had been there since the wedding. He was nervous about the possibility it would go to waste. I thought he had forgotten about it at first until it came out in the conversation that he was secretly afraid to cut into it. He was also trying to amass the proper equipment to do such a thing justice.
A few weeks later, as he was about to leave town for the month, he called me, another of the sibs who are extra-neurotic about wasting things. He had already decided it was a goner, but wanted me to at least try to get something out of it. Had it been prosciutto he would have been in trouble convincing me, but I do like Spanish ham. I drove across the lake to pick up my charge.
I also reminded him that these things have been preserved since the Middle Ages and before. Anything that hung for two years without refrigeration would likely make it another month. I consented to take the ham as sort of its babysitter, promising to bring it back to him when he returned. I pitched a family gathering of wine, cheese and ham. He did want to taste it, but he was clearly relieved to have passed it on. I was happy to take it, because I wanted this fun project for the business. (Mine.) As I left he made me promise not to tell him if it went to waste.
The following day I called my oldest brother, who with his wife often has charcuterie in the evenings. I pitched a Labor Day charcuterie party with me bringing the giant ham. He wasn’t nearly as titillated by slicing a ham as I was, and he was hosting the grandkids for Labor Day weekend. Of all the elements of this project, the kids would likely be most interested in the extremely sharp knife required for it.
I let the ham sit two more days on a chair by itself in the kitchen, finally getting up the nerve to tackle it. My brother sent it with me like he was packing a camper for camp. He wrapped it in paper and placed it in a double Whole Foods bag with its accompanying cotton mesh sling to hang it, and a pamphlet about it that directed me to a video tutorial on slicing it. No wonder he was so intimidated.
I watched the video first, got the sharpest knife in the house, and commenced the cutting. The video explained the different parts of the ham and why I should cut each part in a certain order. The first cut didn’t go so well. I managed to get a few pieces off, but I thought it had run out, so I tried to move to the harder layer of protective fat to no avail. This could be because the fat had melted a bit, and the knife handle was greased. It was like a sludge on my hands that was hard to come off.
I turned over the ham and it looked moldy on the other side, but then I realized it was just the darkness of the meat showing through the melted fat. The pieces that I was cutting then were more like cardboard than paper.
I was about to throw it off the deck for the critters in the woods, but I thought of a friend who is an A-list restaurateur. I told him I was coming to see him with a project. I put the ham in the passenger's seat, where its hoof rested on my thigh as I drove. I was surprised the seat belt alarm didn't go off. It was like having a passenger there.
To be continued….The Adventures of Jamón Serrano.
