La Tienda in the Press

Cured meats are not really a big part of our culinary history in the U.S., but they're quickly making their way into our high-end restaurants and supermarkets. And we should be thankful for this meat migration. These meats, Europe's answer to the cold cut, are rich and savory, complex and refined in flavor. European cured meats have been processed the same way for hundreds of years -- which means they've been perfected.

The curing process is different for each type of meat, but it generally involves washing and salting the meat, and hanging it to dry. This process will take at least several months, and can even take a couple of years. And while many European cured meats are still made the old fashioned way, some of them have changed with the times (which is not always a good thing). This means that nitrates, nitrites and sodium, which are pumped and loaded in most American deli meats, can unfortunately often be found in many of these cured meats.

In Europe (particularly in Spain, Italy and France), cured meats are commonly served as tapas, part of an antipasto plate, or at an aperitif, though they also find their way into recipes. These deli meats can make a simple pasta dish exciting or make a green salad feel more substantial -- essentially, they can make almost any dish feel like a satisfying meal. That's why cured meats are the perfect answer for a quick dinner.

If you find yourself with a lack of time, but some prosciutto on hand, you've pretty much got dinner ready. You can serve it with cheese, bread and a salad. Add it to pasta or eggs. Whatever you can throw together can be made better with the addition of cured meats. There are a wide variety of meats to choose from too -- guaranteeing that you'll never tire of them.

Serrano ham (or Jamon Serrano) is a Spanish dry-cured ham. It's very similar to Italian prosciutto (and the French jambon de Bayonne). The difference is that serrano ham is normally made from a specific breed of pig -- Landrace breed of white pig.

Iberico ham is processed in the same way as serrano ham and prosciutto, but its name is given based on the pig it comes from -- the Iberico pigs. This ham comes from either acorn, pastor or compound-fed Iberico pigs. 

Sources:
Sliced, at La Tienda

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Most Expensive Spice: Saffron
Elizabeth Gunnison

What: Saffron is derived from a type of crocus that grows most extensively in the Mediterranean and Middle East. Its brightly hued threads are graded for quality by the Switzerland-based International Organization for Standardization (ISO), which ranks the product on a scale from 0 to 250 based on color, fragrance, and taste.

How Much: "Coupe" saffron, which carries an ISO grade of 190 or greater, retails for $10 to $15 per gram, and the highest-grade coupe saffrons can reach almost $30 per gram. However, saffron is pungent enough that a little bit goes a long way: The 15 to 20 threads used in a typical paella recipe weigh in at only a very small fraction of a gram.

Why Pay More: The labor-intensive picking, cleaning, sorting, and toasting of these tiny saffron stigmas is to blame for the staggering price tag. It takes a football field–size plot of saffron crocuses to produce just 1 pound of saffron threads, which must be picked immediately upon blooming.

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Most Expensive Meat: Jamón Ibérico de Bellota
Elizabeth Gunnison

What: Jamón Ibérico de bellota refers to the cured leg of a pata negra pig that has been raised free-range in the old-growth oak forests of western Spain. The pigs eat a diet rich in acorns, wild mushrooms, herbs, and grasses, yielding meat that’s richly flavored and low in saturated fat. Each ham is cured for a minimum of two years before reaching the market.

How Much: A 15-pound bone-in leg of jamón Ibérico de bellota retails for around $1,300, or $87 per pound.

Why Pay More: The acorn-rich forests of western Spain make up an ecosystem that exists nowhere else in the world, and each pig requires at least 2 acres of land for ample foraging. That, in turn, strictly limits the amount of jamón Ibérico de Bellota available each year.

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Kemp Minifie

Whether you have hardboiled eggs in your fridge from Easter and Passover, or are just celebrating spring with an ancient symbol of birth and fertility, you absolutely can’t go wrong turning them into deviled eggs. It never fails: They are the first to disappear at a party! So here are five fantastic fillings to tantalize those taste buds. All are for 6 eggs, yielding 12 hors d’oeuvres.

The Classic: (In culinary-speak, deviled means it’s got mustard and a touch of spicy heat.) Mash the yolks with ¼ cup mayonnaise, 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard, and 1/8 teaspoon cayenne. Season with salt. Fill whites and sprinkle with paprika. Hint: Kick up the snazz factor a notch by using Spanish smoked paprika. It comes sweet (dulce), agridulce(bittersweet) and hot (picante).

The Southern Belle: Mash yolks with ¼ cup mayonnaise, 1 teaspoon brown or yellow mustard, and 2 tablespoons drained sweet pickle relish. Season with salt and pepper. Fill whites and dust with regular paprika or top with a slice of pimiento-stuffed olive.

The Nordic: Purée yolks with 3 ounces thinly sliced smoked salmon, 2 ounces cream cheese, 2 tablespoons sour cream, and ½ teaspoon lemon juice. Season with salt, and pulse in 2 tablespoons chopped dill. Fill whites.

The Bollywood: Mash yolks with 3 tablespoons mayonnaise or plain yogurt, 1¼ teaspoons curry powder, ¼ teaspoon ground cumin, 1 teaspoon Major Grey’s chutney (or your favorite; mince any big pieces), ½ teaspoon lime juice and salt to taste. Fill whites. Top with thinly sliced scallion greens.

The Frenchie: Mash yolks with 3 tablespoons mayonnaise, 1 tablespoon minced shallot, ½ teaspoon Dijon mustard, ¼ teaspoon grated lemon zest, ¾ teaspoon lemon juice, and 2 teaspoons finely chopped tarragon. Season with salt and pepper and fill whites.

The California Dreamer: Purée yolks with 2 1/2 ounces fresh mild goat cheese, 3 tablespoons milk, ¾ teaspoon Dijon mustard. Season with salt and pepper and pulse in 2 ½ tablespoons chopped dill. Fill whites.

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#17 - Secreto - A Cut Above

Every year, another piece of meat emerges as the must-eat protein. Chef Seamus Mullen at Tertulia in New York fills us in on the latest: "It's called secreto, and it's a relatively new butcher's cut of pork popular in Spain." The thin steak, from the belly of the pig, resembles a beef skirt steak. "This is not the other white meat," he stresses. "This is crimson red, juicy, and best with sea salt, pepper, and olive oil and grilled over high heat. I've been preaching about secreto for years. I hope it doesn't get too popular!" Sorry, Seamus—the secreto's out.

Secreto $36/lb: latienda.com

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Florence Fabricant

The top Spanish ham comes from purebred black-footed Ibérico pigs that feed on wild acorns. Now, for the first time, it is available in the United States. The brand with the most cachet is 5 Jotas, in business for more than 100 years. It took four years to get final approval from federal agencies. At present, the front-leg ham, called the paleta, above, is available. The hind legs, which take longer to cure, will be available in a few months. Slices of 5 Jotas are silky and rosy, with no sign of drying, and a flavor that’s irresistibly nutty-sweet, with succulent fat. Dehesa, another, less expensive brand — which says its hams are also from purebred Ibérico pigs, and are raised by members of Covap, a cooperative — will reach American stores in about two weeks. A preview sample of the Dehesa paleta was somewhat deeper in color than the 5 Jotas, but was also nut-sweet, satin-textured and mellow.

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I'm Going to Grow Padrón Peppers
Susan Spicer, chef of Bayona and Mondo in New Orleans

"I will try to grow Padrón peppers in my garden. They are smallish, bright green, thin-skinned, bell-shaped peppers that are very flavorful but usually not hot, although there may be one or two hot ones in every few dozen. In Spain they are roasted or sautéed with olive oil and salt, and are served alone, or with anchovies or other ingredients to make tapas." $15 a pound, tienda.com

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Out of the Woods

When it comes to one of the most essential surfaces in our kitchen, we cut with the grain. This selection of hickory, olive, walnut and maple cutting boards made our list not only because they're handsome but also because chopping on quality wood helps keep blades sharp.

Cut crosswise from one piece of aged Spanish olive wood, this 12-inch board has a smooth but natural surface that displays the original bark. La Tienda, tienda.com.

David Nicholson

Raising the small blue cup, Don Harris swirls the green-gold liquid inside, smells its contents and takes a sip.

Smooth with a peppery finish, he pronounces to the 14 foodies gathered for one of La Tienda's olive oil tasting classes. Each participant follows his lead and describes in their own words what they smell and taste.

Like wines that reflect the characteristics of different varietals, Spanish olive oils reflect the individual qualities of the many varieties of olives found there. There are 262 different kinds of olives grown in Spain, says Harris, and La Tienda carries about a dozen different oils.

"Spain produces more olive oil than any other country," says Harris. "A lot of it is put in tankers and shipped to Italy."

For more than 40 years, Harris and his family have been visiting Spain and sampling its food products. In 1996, he founded La Tienda, an online business that sells hams, sausages, cheeses and other artisan foods imported from the country. More recently he opened a retail shop and café by the same name in Williamsburg, Va., where he lives.

Partly for education and partly to increase sales in his store, Harris and his crew hold regular tasting classes to introduce people to Spanish products. Americans probably buy most of their olive oil in supermarkets, he says, and "buying the supermarket version is like buying jug wine."

In Spain, quality wines, cured hams and olive oils are marked with the phrase "Denominación de Origen," which guarantees that they come from a particular region. Oils can be from a single type of olive or a blend that balances the best qualities in each, says Harris. The oil is frequently used as a preservative in sardines, tuna and cheeses packed and sold in jars and tins. Some are infused with mushrooms or truffles.

In La Tienda's catalog, Harris describes four general taste categories that cover the flavors of most oils:

Mild and buttery — These are subtle oils, good for mild dishes such as a simple fish or salad dressing. They tend to be light golden-green.

Fruity and spicy — You can smell the herbs in these green oils. They are delicious with cooked vegetables and seafood.

Fruity and peppery — These will get your attention with a long peppery finish. Their assertive flavors are good companions with sandwich fillings or as a drizzle on garlicky dishes such as pastas or grilled meats. They are often dark green-gold.

Full-bodied and earthy — Like a big wine, these are big olive oils. Rich mouth feel with a full flavor characterize these golden oils.

Senorio de Vizcantar Extra Virgin Olive Oil, the most popular one he sells, is a blend of the juice from three olives: picual, which provides a peppery, astringent taste; picudo, which is light and sweet; and hojiblanca, which has a woodsy character and a sweet aftertaste. This oil is warm and fruity, perfect for salads or dipping in bread, says the La Tienda website.

Juice from the arbequina olive makes an olive oil that's popular with Americans, Harris tells his class, because it's buttery with a slightly peppery finish.

In addition to the Senorio de Vizcantar, Harris introduced the class to these olive oils:

Wild Extra Virgin Olive Oil by "Can Solivera" — A blend of buttery, fruity arbequina and peppery empeltre olives, this oil is pressed in a traditional method used as far back as the Middle Ages.

"First Day of Harvest" Arbequina Extra Virgin Olive Oil by Castillo de Canena — bright green, grassy and fruity.

"First Early Royal" Extra Virgin Olive Oil by Castillo de Canena — Made from an olive that's almost extinct, this oil is very peppery.

Picual Extra Virgin Olive Oil by Castillo de Canena — Peppery and astringent taste that produces a bite at the back of the throat.

Ybarra "Intenso" Extra Virgin Olive Oil — A blend of picual and hojiblanca olive juices, this oil is sweeter and more aromatic.

Harris got his first taste of Spain in the mid-1960s when he was a Navy chaplain serving aboard a destroyer in the Mediterranean Sea. Later he and his young family were stationed at Rota, Spain, on the Bay of Cadiz, and they moved into a nearby town, El Puerto de Santa Maria, to be near the regional foods and the Andalusian wine country. He founded La Tienda after retiring from the Chaplain Corps.

The Williamsburg area is home to retired military officers and their wives, who have lived in many parts of the world and who attend Harris' classes.

"We heard about La Tienda when we lived in Northern Virginia," says Linda Dennis. "We both cook and we've traveled to Barcelona and Morocco. We lived in Italy for a year and a half, so we learned to enjoy different cuisines."

In addition to its wines and foods, Spain has captivated Harris because of its people.

"In Spain, there are very strong families where they cherish their children," he says. "And these kids grow up confidant.

"It's a very healthy, affirming way of life. And the food becomes a medium for warmth and personal interchange."

Olive facts from La Tienda

Olives are harvested by knocking the olive trees with long sticks. The fruit falls on nets that have been spread around the base of the tree.

In ancient times, olive oil was extracted by pressing the olive mash between round layers made then of esparto grass. Today the oil is separated by centrifuge methods.

Wine which is fermented, gets better with age. Olive Oil is a fruit juice and after two years, it loses its flavor.

Store oils in a cool, dark place, but not in the refrigerator where it will congeal.

For more information and to purchase products, go online to http://www.latienda.com

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Richard Massony

I’m standing over my largest cast-iron pot, using a wooden spoon to stir a murky, steaming broth, and wondering if something has gone terribly wrong. I have decided to spend my Sunday afternoon simmering a pot of New Orleans-style white beans with ham hocks, a comforting one-pot dish that will help me come down from the high of five days of Mardi Gras. However, there is something different about these beans: they are positively perfuming my apartment with an intense odor, a smell that is musky, sweet, and porky. Instead of using store-bought pork shanks, I am seasoning my beans with a single mammoth ham hock from one of Virginia’s oldest and finest ham producers, S. Wallace Edwards & Sons. The hock is almost the size of a cabbage, and its meat is darker and smokier than anything that might be called "ham" in a supermarket deli. It is a freak hock. And it is doing something to my beans.

The smell is not unfamiliar though. It is instantly recognizable to me as the smell of traditionally-cured Virginia ham, the same smell permeating Edwards’ curing and aging facility in Surry, Virginia, which I had the pleasure to tour in February with Edwards’ sales manager Keith Roberts.

I had contacted Roberts after tasting Edwards’ product at Charlottesville’s excellent specialty food store, Feast! While stopping in for lunch, I immediately gravitated toward their charcuterie bar to try some locally-produced salumi. After nibbling on excellent coppa and lomo from Richmond-based Olli Salumeria Americana, I sampled Edwards’ peanut-fed "Surryano" ham from the Surry Farms label. The wafer-thin slice, presented on a pad of wax paper, instantly glistened with natural oils when exposed to room temperature. The ham melted on my tongue like a fine Spanish jamón ibérico, releasing a sweet and salty richness. It certainly held its own against any expensive Italian prosciutto. This was unlike any Virginia ham I had tried before, and I wanted to learn more about it (and eat more of it).

That is what led me to drive two-and-a-half hours through a rainstorm on a chilly Friday morning to Surry, where Edwards’ maintains its modest 50,000 square-foot curing and aging facility. Roberts greeted me and then proceeded to guide me through the history of Virginia ham, the curing and aging process, and Edwards’ growing line of meat products.

Roberts explained that ham has been produced in this region since colonial times, when the dry salt-curing process allowed for the preservation of unused meat from slaughtered pigs that would otherwise spoil. Traditionally, hogs would be slaughtered in the winter, and their hindquarters (the hams) would be packed with salt and stored in a cool cellar. The salt leeched moisture from the meat, and thereby prevented spoilage. As the weather warmed during Spring, the hams would be taken from the salt and then hung to dry. During the Summer months, the hams would then be hickory smoked at low heat and left to hang for months. The resulting product was a salty, smoky meat with a more concentrated pork flavor.

While this process was used in a number of locales, Virginia’s terroir proved to be uniquely suited to curing hams. Furthermore, Virginia hogs were often allowed to graze in fields after the peanut harvest, so their diets were fortified with peanuts, giving the resulting hams a distinctive sweet flavor and oily richness. Thus, Virginia hams became known as a sought after product.

A third-generation family company, S. Wallace Edwards & Sons has been curing Virginia hams—using this traditional process—since the 1920’s. The Edwards family’s principal business was operating the Surry ferry on the James River, but in order to make some supplemental income they cured their own Virginia ham and sold it to ferry passengers in sandwiches. The ham was a sensation among tourists visiting nearby Williamsburg, and by 1926 Edwards had begun filling mail orders for whole hams. Ham production eventually became Edwards’ primary business.

Today, Edwards is one of the few remaining producers of real Virginia hams cured and aged using traditional methods. Roberts guided me on a tour of Edwards’ facilities, literally walking me through the process. The hams are salt-cured in refrigerated rooms replicating the effect of an un-insulated cellar during a Virginia winter. They are smoked with hickory wood and aged in warmer summer rooms for as long as eight months. "The process has not changed in any way, shape, or form," says Roberts. "We’ve just moved it indoors and cleaned it up a little bit."

In addition to the rigorous process, Roberts stressed Edwards’ attention to the raw product coming into the facility. Edwards will not accept any product that does not arrive within four days of the hogs being put down, and the meat must be kept within a very specific four-degree temperature range. Edwards prefers to source its hams from local sources. "We like to stay as close to home as possible," Roberts says. This is a practical consideration, as shipping costs and freshness are paramount. It does not make business sense to invest the time, labor, and curing room real estate to a ham if it is more likely to spoil. Finally, Roberts explained that they want the hogs to be as stress-free as possible when they are slaughtered, as high stress can actually damage the integrity of the animal’s tissue. It is for this reason that Edwards’ hogs are not put down in the hot summer months and that electrocution as a method of slaughter is frowned upon.

Edwards currently makes a number of varieties of ham, from the basic Edwards ham, which is aged 90 days, to the hoof-on Wigwam ham and the high-end Surryano hams, which are aged up to 18 months. The trademarked Surryano, which gets its name from a combination of Spanish Serrano ham and Edwards’ hometown of Surry, is their newest product. It is made exclusively from peanut-fed Berkshire hogs, certified humane, and aged for over 450 days. Like its European counterparts, it is shelf stable due to the long aging process. However, unlike prosciutto or Serrano, the Surryano is smoked and generally treated like a traditional Virginia ham. "We’re not trying to do the same thing as the European hams. This is a top-notch domestic country ham," Roberts explains.

Edwards also makes its own bacon as well as a distinctive Sage-flavored Surry Sausage, and there are other limited distribution items such as their ham hocks. Roberts said that they are experimenting with new products such as lardo and lomo. For now, Edwards’ products can be found in Charlottesville at Foods of All Nations, the Organic Butcher, and Feast!

Despite my fleeting concern about the smell emanating from my white beans, when I finally taste them they are rich and delicious. I have had this dish countless times before, but I feel like I am tasting this Creole staple for the first time. The ham flavor is no longer a bit player, it takes center stage. The hock is still intact, but gentle prying with a fork and knife loosens some of the soft flesh from the bone. The flavor, though rendered gentler in the stew, is deep and round, salty and sweet. This is Virginia ham.

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Smoked Olive Oil
Tony Conte, The Oval Room, Washington, D.C.

Probably because I'm Italian, I generally prefer Italian olive oil to Spanish. But a few months ago, I discovered a wonderful pine cone-smoked Arbequina olive oil from Miguel & Valentino in Barcelona. It's lightly smoky and perfect for finishing meats or drizzling over crushed Yukon Gold potatoes along with lemon juice and yuzu salt.

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How a third-generation ham master in Virginia took a cue from old-world Europe and reinvented the South’s most humble pork product
Logan Ward

In 1991, a Virginia chef named Jimmy Sneed gave a seven-pound Wigwam country ham to a globe-trotting hairstylist. Sneed thought the ham would make a distinctive house gift for his friend, who had been invited to spend the holidays at the Aspen home of Rafaella De Laurentiis, daughter of the renowned film producer Dino De Laurentiis. A Southern delicacy, the Wigwam had been lovingly dry-cured and smoked by S. Wallace Edwards & Sons, a revered third-generation company across the James River from Jamestown. Unbeknownst to Sneed, the ham came with cooking instructions: Soak overnight, add fresh water, simmer eight hours, remove skin, trim fat, glaze with brown sugar, and bake for thirty minutes at three hundred degrees. The Wigwam, which is especially long with a boomerang curve at the knuckle, wouldn’t fit in De Laurentiis’s biggest pot. So the houseguest drove to a hardware store, bought a saw, cut the hock off, and simmered the ham for a day, flooding the posh villa with the reek of boiled salt pork. To Sneed, though, the odor was merely evidence of a sacrilege: boiling away the nuanced flavors and textures painstakingly achieved only after months of salt-pampering, smoking, and patience. You might as well heat up a skillet and scramble caviar.

"This is one of the most glorious dried prosciutto-style hams I’d ever tasted in my life," recalls Sneed, who trained under the late Jean-Louis Palladin, whom some considered the greatest French chef in America. "All he needed to do was shave it. When he told me the story, I went crazy."

A few months later, the chef retold the story while addressing a crowd of foodies at a Julia Child–sponsored event in Washington, D.C. Just as Sneed lifted the cotton sack that had held the meat, Sam Wallace Edwards III, scion of the family business that had cured the ham in question, entered the room. "These are the morons," said Sneed, pointing to the Edwards label, "who put cooking instructions on a dry-cured ham."

It is possible to look back on this encounter as marking a kind of shift in the illustrious history of a humble Southern classic — a recognition that country ham, that salty mainstay of Huddle House menus, might deserve more adoration than just something destined to be served with redeye gravy or slapped between two halves of a buttermilk biscuit. Today, thanks to a renewed appreciation for regional American foods, country ham is enjoying a comeback, bouncing back from an unmistakable decline. A handful of cure masters, farmers, and chefs are redefining and garnering new respect for it, while reviving cherished traditions. Now the backwoods staple is just as likely to show up dry-shaved, prosciutto-style, in white-tablecloth restaurants in New York and San Francisco as it is tucked between dinner rolls at a wedding reception in Richmond.

This shift did not happen overnight, however. Despite their inauspicious first meeting, Edwards and Sneed eventually became friends. But for years the cure master ignored the gregarious chef’s good-natured rebukes about cooking instructions on hams. For one thing, federal law at the time required raw hams, even fully cured ones, to come with cooking instructions. And besides, Edwards’s family was in the country ham business, thank you very much, and country ham was meant to be skillet-fried. Then one day about ten years ago, Tim Harris, a Williamsburg, Virginia, importer of gourmet foods from Spain, offered Edwards a taste of a dry-cured, acorn-fattened Ibérico ham. At the time, Edwards was charging $75 for a whole Wigwam ham, his company’s finest offering. Harris’s Ibéricos were bringing $1,500. Each.

When the wafer-thin slice of meat known as black gold hit Edwards’s tongue, Chef Sneed’s know-it-all remonstrations finally made sense.

That, Edwards thought, is nothing but fancy country ham.

The Turning Point

According to the strictest definition of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a country ham is a hind leg of a pig, aged at least seventy days. The differences between American country ham and Spanish Ibérico or Serrano ham or Italian prosciutto are subtle. They mostly have to do with what a pig ate, whether the meat was smoked, and how a ham is sliced. Serrano refers to the highland region where these famous Spanish hams are made; the word means "mountain" in Spanish. Ibérico hams come from black Iberian pigs from southern Spain and are known for their high fat content. Most American country hams come from pigs raised on corn. And the famous Italian Prosciutto di Parma is dry-cured ham from the Parma region of Tuscany, where farmers often fatten the pigs on cheese curds.

Why does anyone dry-cure a ham in the first place? Think of a country ham as the porcine equivalent of beef jerky or dried apples. Salt-curing removes water until there’s not enough moisture left for microbes to grow in the meat, a vital step in the days before refrigeration. With the advent of refrigeration came "city hams," the tender, spiral-sliced versions you see anchoring holiday sideboards. City hams get wet-cured, pumped full of brine and then boiled or lightly smoked. Because they can go from fresh to ready-to-eat in just a few days, they’re cheaper to produce. But a country-cured ham, though rendered unnecessary by refrigeration, simply tastes better.

Modern life, however, has not been kind to the American country ham. Starting after World War II, industrial processors gobbled up family curing houses. To cut costs, large plants compressed the dry-curing process, whittling it down to the USDA’s seventy-day minimum, even though hams traditionally cured for at least six months. By the late twentieth century, the price of country ham dove to 99 cents a pound. What had once been the pride of the Southern table became a supermarket loss leader. Fresh out of the University of Richmond with a business degree in the late 1970s, Sam Edwards worked his tail off navigating those currents—making deals and cutting prices, only to see his company’s margins get thinner, while profits didn’t budge. He soon faced a choice: cut corners on quality; go out of business, like dozens of family-owned curing companies around the South; or veer off in a completely different direction. "Ever since then," Edwards says, "I’ve been going the other way."

Edwards realized that there was only one way he could compete against the big players, who were doing to pork what Perdue did to poultry: He needed to appeal to a clientele who would pay more for artisanal meats. Back in 1983, he urged his skeptical father to buy booth space at the national Fancy Foods Show. The very name was off-putting to a hardworking ham man from rural Virginia, and for a long time the father sat on the fence. The flip of a coin settled it, thus beginning an annual trek to the specialty foods show and the transition to the ancient art of high-quality, raw-shaved meats.

"I think Sam was a visionary in that he understood that only one guy wins the price game," says Patrick Martins, the founder of Slow Food U.S.A. and owner of a Brooklyn-based company that sells humanely raised, hormone-free meats. "So you either try to be that guy or you try to add value and quality. That takes guts."

Therein lies the new twist in the old story of country ham. The current passion for all foods local and slow is helping swing the pendulum away from shortcuts and cheap hams, and producers like Edwards—along with Nancy Newsom in Kentucky and Allan Benton in Tennessee—are getting their day in the sun. "I don’t know that there is a technology," says Martins, "that does what Sam does."

Full Circle

On a hot day last September, I opened a door and stepped into winter. I was in Surry in rural southeastern Virginia, following Edwards on a tour of his family’s pork-processing plant. The fifty-four-year-old Edwards is a tall man with a big frame, a jowly face, and a bushy gray walrus mustache. He looks like a guy who would cure hams, but he talks like a stockbroker and drives a Lexus SUV with vanity plates that read VA HAM. Winter was a walk-in refrigerator covered in a thick slurry of salt that looked like dirty snow on a city street. Inside, where the mercury hovered at forty degrees, sat fresh hams heaped with salt and piled low on pallets.

To make classic country ham, modern-day commercial curers re-create the changing seasons under a roof, unlike Edwards’s grandfather, who filled tall, square curing houses with meat and let Mother Nature do her thing. At the Edwards plant, after thirty days in a winter room, standard country hams move to a spring room, where they spend two to three weeks at fifty degrees. Summer begins in a windowless, hickory-smoke-choked, cinder-block chamber, where hams hang for a week, hock down, in net bags called stockinettes. After that, they spend at least three months in an aging room, suspended from tall pinewood racks. Wigwam hams, on the other hand, spend at least a year aging, giving them a silky texture and complex flavors and making them indefinitely shelf stable.

After tasting his first $1,500 Ibérico and accompanying his friend the importer on a ham-sampling tour of Spain, Edwards set out to improve upon his grandfather’s signature ham. Instead of buying conventional pork, he began ordering the meat of Berkshire pigs, a heritage breed that resembles the Ibérico and is beloved for its fat-marbled flesh. Edwards’s reasoning was simple: "If you put butter in a recipe, half a stick makes it taste good, but two sticks make it even better." The pigs came from Patrick Martins, who had contracted with Missouri farmers to raise the Berkshires humanely and without hormones or antibiotics. While the farmers sent tenderloins overnight to celebrity chefs in New York and other cities, they shipped the hams to Edwards. Instead of six or even twelve months, Edwards ages these special hams for up to eighteen months, taking them through two summer sweats until they become dense and dry and intensely flavorful. The high fat content of the Berkshires makes the longer aging possible. He calls his new high-dollar product Surryano ham, a playful combination of Surry and Serrano.

Inside the Surryano aging room, the thick air smelled sweet and sour and smoky all at once, like a bacon-sizzling Sunday morning intensified a hundred times over—the same smell Edwards’s baby sister used to assume was their father’s cologne. Thousands of hams hung like giant mahogany chrysalises. The skin glistened as their weight pushed diamonds of flesh through the net bags. According to a handwritten date on the tag, the ham hit the salt in July 2009, making it more than thirteen months old, with more time needed before it could be sold whole for $180, in four-ounce packages for $9 apiece, or in minimalist arrangements for $5 per ounce at David Chang’s Momofuku Ssäm Bar in Manhattan, one of many upmarket restaurants where the ham ends up.

Edwards’s most recent experiments involve hams from an expensive Polish breed called the Mangalitsa, a woolly pig whose ability to fatten up outpaces even the Berkshire. Edwards is also shipping Virginia peanuts to the Missouri farmers raising his Berkshires, to fatten them the old-fashioned way. Before factory farmers raised pigs in cramped metal cages, Virginians released free-roaming pigs into peanut fields after the harvest to root up leftovers. "What I’m doing is identical to the way my grandfather did it," Edwards said.

"My father and grandfather were sticklers for the details of what we do," he added, before driving an ice pick into the heart of a ham, removing it, and sniffing the end. "We use sense of smell and touch and eyesight and taste to tell if hams are ready." Friends and regular clients would ask his grandfather to pick a special ham, and he would mark those with a blue crayon. Though the business has grown since then—it sells fifty thousand hams a year—Edwards still considers it small compared with the industrial food giants. "I don’t carry a blue crayon," he says, "but if you called me and said your daughter was getting married, I might still pick a ham for you."

After we left the Surryano room, we approached a table where a woman was slicing Surryano hams for packaging. Edwards handed me a slice. It was delicious—salty and smoky, with an apple-like sweetness and the earthy aftertaste of an aged cheese. "All I want," he said, "is for people to try our ham and taste the difference."

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