La Tienda in the Press

Florence Fabricant

In a few weeks, New York shops are expected to start selling the special, costly meat from the black-footed Ibérico pigs of Spain, including the Ibérico de bellota, the ones that are fattened on acorns.

Despaña, Fairway and Formaggio Essex, among other food shops, are expecting shipments of the lomo, or meat from the pigs’ loins, and sausages. Formaggio Kitchen in Massachusetts will also sell them, and they are available from tienda.com.

The lomo, which has been aged about four months, is a sausage-shaped piece of solid, dry-cured, burgundy-red meat. A pound or more, it is enclosed in a natural casing. It is richly meaty and, when sliced thin, excellent simply on a plate or in sandwiches. It is easy to cut at home with a sharp knife, and it offers the same depth of flavor that makes the ham, jamón Ibérico, a connoisseur’s delight.

The hams that are to be imported still have more than a year’s aging to go before they will be ready to be sold. The loin takes less time because it is a much smaller cut of meat. 

Some of the meats are labeled “bellota,” indicating that they are from Ibérico de bellota. Bellota lomo has a nuttier, deeper flavor, more marbling and a slightly softer texture. Thick chorizo, seasoned with paprika, and salchichón, a kind of salami, are also available both from regular Ibérico and from bellota. The bellota is richer. 

Until now, all the pork products imported to this country from Spain have been made from pigs raised and slaughtered in other countries, like Denmark, and cured in Spain. Ibérico products are from Spanish pigs and made by Embutidos Fermín, near Salamanca, in a facility approved by the United States Department of Agriculture. The products are imported by Fermín USA and have the label of José Andrés, a chef in Washington who is a partner in the venture. 

The retail shops have not set their prices, but at tienda.com prices for sausages start at $19.95 for seven ounces of chorizo from the Ibérico pigs and go to about $31 a pound for 2.2 pounds of bellota sausage. The lomo is $178 for 2.2 pounds of Ibérico and $214 for 2.2 pounds of Ibérico de bellota.

No quest for cheese of La Mancha
Maricel E. Presilla


Spain produces scores of fascinating cheeses, but ask Americans to name their favorite, and the answer will surely be Queso Manchego. The U.S. is one of the world's largest consumers of this Spanish classic, importing almost 4 million pounds last year, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Nutty with a balanced blend of saltiness and lactic tang, neither too pungent nor too bland, this sturdy sheep's milk cheese is easy to like and easy to find in supermarkets, gourmet shops and restaurants.

As its name indicates, Manchego comes from La Mancha, a high plateau in central Spain. Protected by a Denomination of Origin, the name Manchego can be given only to cheeses made from the milk of Manchega sheep in municipalities belonging to the provinces of Albacete, Ciudad Real, Cuenca and Toledo and ripened at least 60 days.

To be sure you are buying the real thing, search for a numbered commercial seal of approval from the Consejo Regulador de la Denominacion de Origin Queso Manchego and a commercial label stating the cheese is made with Manchega sheep milk.

A young Manchego with a minimum of 60 days ripening is labeled fresco. A cheese of about six months is a semi-curado (semi-cured), and one aged from six months to one year is a curado (cured). A cheese aged for more than 16 months is an añejo (aged), and, like a well-structured wine, is usually the most complex, with a drier texture and a more emphatic brininess and pungency.

..... A good source of artisanal Manchego, made with unpasteurized milk for a more pronounced flavor, is La Tienda (tienda.com, 800-710-4304), which sells a 14-month-old reserva for $13 a pound plus shipping.

At any age, Manchego is a pleaser. When young or semi-cured, it is terrific in sandwiches and in the filling of croquettes. A more piquant aged Manchego comes close in pungency to a good Parmigiano Reggiano and it is delicious by itself as a tapa with some crusty bread.

At Cucharamama, I top our serrano ham pizzas and flat breads with a mixture of aged Manchego and Parmigiano Reggiano spiced with ground Andean peppers. There is no more luxurious seasoning for bread.

Maricel E. Presilla is the chef/co-owner of Cucharamama and Zafra in Hoboken, N.J.

Elaine Glusac, Tribune Media Services

Food trends hover over the Mediterranean like a stationary weather cell, drifting between Italy and France, with occasional dips down to Morocco. Perhaps it's no surprise, then, that the rain is currently over Spain.

"Spain is the center of the culinary universe right now," says Anya von Bremzen, author of "The New Spanish Table" (Workman).

This is not simply a matter of restless taste buds in a country undergoing a culinary revolution. At his world-famous restaurant El Bulli, north of Barcelona, chef Ferran Adria has snared the international spotlight by applying science to cooking, deconstructing traditional dishes and mixing unusual ingredients.

"People wanted to shake off the old lifestyle," says Miss von Bremzen, whose book combines new and classic recipes. "Eating new food was part of being modern. The Spanish are very adventurous."

While home cooks are unlikely to attempt Mr. Adria's high-wire culinary theatrics, the buzz has pushed traditional and, until recently, little known Spanish foods into the stateside spotlight. The essential flavors of Spain rely on specific ingredients such as jamon (cured ham), pimenton (smoked paprika), olives and olive oil, cheeses and anchovies.

"The gastronomic range is huge but simple," says Jose Andres, who runs the three Jaleo restaurants in Washington, Bethesda and Arlington and is author of "Tapas: A Taste of Spain in America" (Clarkson Potter).

"If you have olive oil and pimenton, you can do [many] different recipes," he says. 

Compared with the starch-mad Italians and the sauce-happy French, Spaniards are more restrained, allowing one major ingredient in a dish to solo. "Spanish cooking is drier, more singular, not as diffused," says Miss von Bremzen. "It's about one ingredient tasting very good, like tossing sardines with garlic and parsley and leaving it alone. Even when chefs riff on it, they don't put a lot on the plate."

Getting some of the ingredients may require planning. Internet sites such as www.latienda.com and www.spanishtable.com specialize in Spanish goods hard to find in most American grocery markets. Once procured, Spanish food is beginner-friendly, aficionados say.

"If you're doing a dinner party, you can start with a spread of things that are very Spanish and easy to do, including jamon, olives and cheese," says chef Andrew Zimmerman, who once cooked contemporary American dishes but goes Spanish at the new Del Toro restaurant in Chicago.

Spain's most familiar and widely copied dining format -- tapas served on small plates -- puts flexibility on the menu. Entertaining with tapas allows you to show off your skills at multiple dishes or to fudge it by mounting last night's stew atop crusty bread slices accompanied by bowls of olives and almonds. 

"Tapas provide the freedom to have not one but six, seven, eight dishes," Mr. Andres says. "It's the union of the high-end tasting menu and informal cooking. Tapas gives you the freedom in a simple, informal way to share a lot of things."

The cure for ho-hum ham: salt, air, time and care
Amy Culbertson

At Easter, a cook's thoughts often turn to ham. But if your mental picture involves a giant pink football, sugar-glazed or covered with pineapple rings, oozing juice and cut into thick, soft slices, you have a whole world of ham yet to explore.

For many who are passionate about pork, those spiral-sliced babies that anchor holiday tables in so many households are wimpy, waterlogged, flabby, pale imitations. The real thing? Dry-cured ham, aged and coddled for months or even years, according to ancient farmhouse traditions.

Prosciutto from Italy. Jamon de serrano from Spain. Westphalian and Black Forest ham from Germany. American country ham from Virginia, Kentucky or Tennessee. Or the fabled pata negra, black-footed ham -- the crown of Spanish cuisine and so prized that aficionados are plunking down a couple hundred bucks' deposit each to secure a place on the waiting list for the first Iberico hams that will reach this country, in 2007 or 2008.

What makes these delicacies different from their city cousins? Almost everything, it turns out.

Your typical mass-produced supermarket ham, usually sold already cooked, has been wet-cured, or brine-cured -- injected with a curing solution containing salt and probably sugar, as well as sodium nitrate and other chemicals.

"Look at the ingredient line; if the first or second ingredient listed is water, that's a pumped product," third-generation country-ham producer Sam Edwards of Surry, Va., says disdainfully.

By contrast, the ingredients that come together to turn a leg of pork into a dry-cured ham are salt; possibly sugar or pepper or a few other spices; smoke, in some cases -- along with air, microbes, temperature and time.

Air makes the difference

Artisanal food expert and author Ari Weinzweig of the Zingerman's specialty food empire sums up the dry-curing process in an essay called A Campaign for Country Ham: 

"Dry-cured hams are never baked, boiled or steamed. Rather, the "cooking" is done by a combination of salt, time and, sometimes, smoke. In the process, harmful bacteria are killed, 'good' molds develop to contribute to flavor, and water leaves the ham through evaporation, concentrating the ham's natural flavors in the process."

The curing and aging ritual varies in detail from region to region, but the outline is essentially the same: The trimmed ham legs are covered with salt; then, after a period of curing, are either smoked or hung directly in an aging room to air-dry.

Curing, of course, started out as "a way of preserving fresh meat to eat year-round," notes Edwards. As the hams age, they lose so much moisture that bacteria can't multiply in them, so they are safe at room temperature.

In the process, though, as the meat ripens and the complex proteins break down, a transformation in flavor is effected.

In some European ham traditions, the very air -- mountain or ocean breezes -- is considered essential in developing the ham's special flavor profile.

But most ham experts note that the ham starts with the pig -- its breed, its food and the way it is raised. Which brings us back to Spain's jamon Iberico, the Holy Grail of hamdom. It's made from a special breed of black pigs that roam oak woodlands in Spain.

"Iberico pigs are in effect free-range," says Don Harris, whose www.latienda.com company was the first to bring Spanish serrano hams to America through the Internet. The pigs forage on acorns, which in turn flavor their meat.

Harris' company has 230 names on a waiting list for the Iberico hams, which have never been available in America because the Spanish slaughterhouses -- though quite sanitary, Harris and others note -- did not conform to U.S. standards. Now that a slaughterhouse has been approved, "with two or three in the wings," Harris plans to be the first to sell Ibericos over here, for between $800 and $1,000 for a 16- to 18-pound ham.

Lots of bang for the pork

If you're not in the market for a thousand-dollar ham, don't worry: You don't have to go whole hog to explore the world of dry-cured ham. Yes, the per-pound prices do hover around the $20 mark, but a little bit goes a long way.

For an appetizer, you need only buy a couple of ounces of dry-cured ham per person; for seasoning or flavoring in cooking, you won't require much, either.

Less expensive is the smoked ham called speck, of Austrian origin. It's a real sleeper, touted by chefs and foodies such as Weinzweig. In a recent ham tasting at Central Market, some of us favored the speck over the pricier prosciutto and serrano.

And a bargain compared with its imported brethren is country ham made by small producers in the Southeastern U.S. -- though it's hard to find in these parts.

If you think dry-cured ham begins and ends with prosciutto, he insists, you're shortchanging yourself: "It's like saying all cheese is Cheddar, and I don't need to try the other cheeses because I've already eaten Cheddar."

From Spain to Germany, a gallery of dry-cured hams

An overview of some of the varieties of dry-cured hams that are likely to be accessible to American buyers:

Prosciutto is the most widely known dry-cured ham in America. For years, the only legal prosciutto-style hams sold in America were domestic-made imitations, as U.S. regulations prevented the import of prosciutto from Italy. Since 1989, though, we've been able to buy the real thing.

Italian prosciutto is air-dried, not smoked; only salt is used in the cure. The most celebrated Italian prosciutto is Prosciutto di Parma, from the Emilia-Romagna region. Many aficionados, however, prefer Prosciutto di San Daniele, from the Friuli region in the northeast.

Jamon serrano, from Spain -- another unsmoked ham -- is gaining popularity as an alternative to prosciutto. It has a coarser, more rustic texture and a lustier flavor than that of prosciutto.

While in Italy the prosciutto "face" is covered with lard during part of the curing process to keep the meat moister, in Spain no lard is used, to promote water loss. The drying sheds are usually built at high elevations (the word "serrano" means "mountain-dwelling" or "of the mountains").

The two brands you're most likely to find are Revilla and Redondo Iglesias, both aged for 18 months.

Westphalian ham is a German product that is cold-smoked over a beechwood fire to which juniper twigs and berries are often added. Sold boneless, it's more strongly flavored, saltier and darker than the Mediterranean hams, with an almost gamy edge.

Black Forest ham, above, is another German ham. The boneless ham is soaked in caramel before being heavily cold-smoked over pine chips. It has a prosciuttolike texture and appears quite lean.

Speck is a lesser-known dry-cured ham, prized by cognoscenti for its distinctive flavor. Of Austrian origin, it's produced in the Dolomites in the Alto Adige region of Italy, which used to be part of Austria, as well as in the Carinthian region and other areas of Austria.

This ham is lightly smoked, and spices are added to the curing salt. With its well-balanced flavor, this may be the most versatile of all the dry-cured hams. Even more happily, it's usually cheaper than prosciutto or serrano.

American country ham is a tradition in the Southeastern region of the United States. Salt-cured, it's sometimes flavored with sugar, honey or pepper, and it's cold-smoked, most commonly over hickory or maple. Most producers encourage the formation of mold as essential to the ham's complexity of flavor, and the salt cure is heavier than in most of the European hams. The most high-profile American country ham is Smithfield ham, produced inside the corporate limits of Smithfield, Va.

Tasso -- a heavily smoked, highly spiced, extremely lean ham that is used more often in cooking than eaten raw -- is a regional specialty of Louisiana's Cajun culture. Local availability has become inconsistent after Hurricane Katrina.

SOURCES: Ari Weinzweig, Zingerman's; Don Harris, www.latienda.com; Sam Edwards, S. Wallace Edwards & Sons Inc.; Edouard Damez, Central Market

 

Paul Lukas

From condiments to main courses, most food subcultures have their holy grails. Kobe beef, Beluga caviar, o-toro sushi, fleur de sel, Johnnie Walker Blue Label - each of these is a super-premium product that represents the acme of its particular category.

For pork products, the holy grail is pata negra - the highly prized, fabulously expensive Spanish ham that's so hearty and rich, so magnificently delectable, it makes Italian prosciutto taste like Boar's Head.

Or at least that's what you always hear. Most Americans have had to take this on faith, because there's no way to sample pata negra here - not legally, at least. All meat imported into America must be processed at slaughterhouses that meet U.S. Department of Agriculture standards, and the small Spanish abattoirs where pata negra is produced have been unwilling to make the investments needed to bring their facilities up to spec. So although this delicacy is enjoyed throughout Europe and other parts of the world, it's been unavailable in America.

That's soon going to change.In a development that rocked the food world (okay, the world of obsessive food geeks), a Virginia food importer called La Tienda announced last September that it had reached an agreement with the Spanish and American governments to certify the first USDA-approved slaughterhouse and curing facility in Spain, making pata negra eligible for export to America for the first time.

There's a catch: One reason pata negra tastes so good is that it cures for at least two years (there are other reasons as well, which we'll get to in a minute). So the first hams for American export won't be ready to ship until late 2007 or early 2008. But that hasn't kept several hundred enthusiasts from reserving whole bone-in hams for themselves by putting down $200 deposits at La Tienda's Web site tienda.com. If that sounds like a lot of money for a deposit, get this: The final price will be about $60 a pound, which means each ham will cost somewhere between $800 and $1,000, depending on its weight. High on the hog, indeed.

What makes pata negra so expensive, and so delicious? There are three primary components:

* The pigs. Pata negra - which means "black leg" - is produced exclusively from a rare breed of black-hoofed iberico hogs that have roamed southern Spain for centuries. Much like Wagyu steer - the cattle used for Kobe beef - these pigs feature a high degree of intramuscular fat marbling, which is a key flavor determinant. Iberico pigs tend to have very small litters, which helps explain why pata negra is so pricey - there's a builtin scarcity factor. Because cross-breeding can increase litter yields, Spanish law now specifies that pata negra can come from cross-bred pigs as long as they have at least 75% iberico blood. The president of La Tienda, Don Harris, said the flavor difference between the cross-bred pigs and 100% purebloods is "very little."

* Care and diet. The pigs are allowed to roam freely over several acres, feeding primarily on acorns from cork oak trees.The acorns give the finished product a complex earthiness not found in other hams. Moreover, cork oak groves are relatively small and rare, which creates yet another production ceiling that adds to the ham's price and mystique. And in a nice side benefit, the acorn diet increases the ham's level of oleic acid, the unsaturated fat that lowers "bad" cholesterol and raises "good" cholesterol. In other words, pata negra may be the world's most expensive health food.

* Curing. After the pigs are slaughtered (or "sacrificed,"as the Spaniards prefer to say),the rear legs are salted and hung to air-cure, usually for at least two years and sometimes as long as three, which is much longer than for Italian prosciutto or American country hams.This concentrates the meat's flavor - and, because time is money, further adds to its price.

"Okay," you're thinking. "That's interesting, but how does it taste? Is it really worth it?" Until recently, I couldn't have answered these questions because I hadn't been overseas since becoming aware of pata negra. But last month I visited a friend in London and made a point of visiting the wonderful Borough Market, where pata negra was at the top of my shopping list. I was just explaining the situation to my British friend - the acorns, the extra-long cure, the whole deal - when, as if on cue, we came upon a vendor's stall with a sign that read,"Spanish Hams."

I approached the clerk and asked if they had pata negra. She gestured toward an entire pig's leg - black hoof and all - mounted horizontally in a metal slicing rack. The price was L15 for 100 grams, or about $130 a pound. Fortunately, there was no minimum, so I asked for L10 worth and watched, rapt, as she slowly hand-carved several paper-thin, translucent slices. It was oddly compelling, like watching a performance. Every now and then she'd break the spell by cutting off a small scrap and offering it for us to taste. It was good - very good.

Later, at my friend's flat, we unwrapped the ham, which looked pretty much like prosciutto. As the clerk had instructed us, we ran a serving plate under hot water, dried it, and then let the ham sit on the plate for a minute or two, so that the warm surface would begin to melt the ham's fat, creating a richer, creamier effect.Then we began to eat.

It's always tricky to eat something that's supposed to be life-altering, because the food's reputation, and the resultant mental drum-roll of anticipation, recontextualizes the experience. How much of what you're tasting is based on your expectations? How much is based on not wanting to be the one person who "doesn't get it"? How much is based on wanting to justify the expense? (And if the food is disappointing, how much of that is based on the inevitable letdown that comes when the bar of expectations has been set impossibly high?)

All these caveats notwithstanding, I can honestly say I found pata negra to be worth the hype. The flavor is both nutty and buttery, with a mild saltiness that provides just the right counterpoint. And the texture seems to evolve from meaty to melty with each chew.

Life-altering? Not quite. But definitely life-enhancing. I'm already counting the days until those first hams are ready for export.

Spice racks go global as amateur cooks bring new boldness to the kitchen
Clayton Collins | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

As much as she prized the wide, multiethnic offerings of the big one-stop grocery near her Los Angeles home, Charlotte Beal recently began to feel that something was missing in her culinary life. It needed still more zest, and some personal alchemy.

So a few months ago, the self-described "foodie" - a 30-something former editor for Bon Appétit magazine who researches food trends for the online firm Iconoculture - joined with friends on an excursion. Their goal: Make a powerhouse paella from scratch. "We spent an entire afternoon going to these specialty stores looking for smoked paprika from Spain, pimentón de la vera," Ms. Beal says. "And peppers - you can't just get red peppers, you have to get roasted piquillo peppers."

Her club has since reconvened around an Indian menu, scouring shops for amchoor (mango powder). The group plans to eat its away around the world, and not by way of the local food court. That puts Beal and her friends in the middle of a long-simmering and newly resurgent trend: Many of today's amateur cooks reach confidently for spicier ingredients and greater degrees of difficulty.

Experts credit the influence of burgeoning Latino and other ethnic populations, hotter restaurant fare, television shows (such as Bravo's "Top Chef") that showcase ever more radical fusion, catalog and Internet purveyors of spices and plants, even a post-Katrina diaspora of Cajun cooks.

"To a certain extent it's a grass-roots backlash to the sort of standardized food that people have been eating" at fast-food and chain restaurants, says Carl Brasseaux, director of the Center for Louisiana Studies in New Orleans.

Experts trace authentic ethnic cuisine as a dining-out option to the 1980s - to the opening of Santa Fe's Coyote Café, or a US tour by Cajun chef Paul Prudhomme. Last year the National Restaurant Association debuted an International Cuisine Pavilion at its Chicago show, acknowledging that the ethnic-food boom had become a main driver of the $476 billion industry. For daring home cooks, grocers such as Whole Foods have long carried exotic provisions. What has changed: the elevation of the arcane, and the depth of do-it-yourself interest.

A one-day chili pepper festival in Brooklyn, N.Y., drew some 10,000 attendees in August. Over the past few years, attendance has increased dramatically, says Anita Jacobs, who coordinates the festival for the Brooklyn Botanical Garden. "People are coming with much more knowledge than they have in the past," she says, "and much more openness to trying new things."

Ms. Jacobs, who "curates" peppers for the Brooklyn Botanic Garden's show, points to the emergence of fiery show-stoppers from such places as Korea, Thailand, Haiti, and Brazil. She also notes the rise of one of her favorite websites, chileplants.com, which ships seedlings. A few years ago, she says, the site could boast an already impressive 200 or so varieties. Today it offers more than 500.

Online spice-seller Penzeys Spices, in Brookfield, Wis., claims a database of more than 1 million names in its 20th year of business. Once a catalog-only firm, it still issues print catalogs eight times a year and has an expanding network of 28 stores.

"We're doing fabulously well," says spokeswoman Margie Gibbons, "and that's a testament to the fact that people are in their own kitchens cooking." She declined to give specific growth numbers.

Some home cooks might be encouraged by the more combustible comestibles they find when they eat out. At Gourmet India in Boston, a server cautions customers who order the chicken vindaloo, a hot vinegar-and-potato dish that numbs the lips.

"Now more people know about it, and they ask for it," says manager Shekhan Goswami.

Even fast-food lovers are feeling more burn. McDonald's partly attributed a February sales bump to the introduction of its Spicy Premium Chicken sandwich, with chipotle. And Church's this month tipped its hat to spicier fare as the "silver bullet" of the fast-food sector.

Not all the action is in pre-cooked fare.

"I see a lot more mom-and-pop companies coming out of the woodwork selling ethnic foods," says Jacobs. "[Many are] garage startups that soon require warehouses," she adds, citing the two-year-old Bombay Emerald Chutney Co. Ethnic cooking "is accessible. Anybody can take a simple chicken dinner and make it elegant by adding a chutney," she says.

Ingredients abound. Even shoppers at Safeway encounter Sadef, a brand that promotes Middle Eastern foods, says Guy Garcia, author of the 2004 book "The New Mainstream," an account of rising multicultural influences across all aspects of American life. Kefir yogurt is now available at Wal-Mart and Target.

"More and more Latinos - and South Asian Indians and ethnic Chinese and Thais - are in the US consuming [their traditional] foods," Mr. Garcia says. "At the same time ... [mainstream] Americans, multicultural by choice and affinity rather than race or ethnicity, are becoming more adventurous and omnivorous.

"It's still new to a lot of us, but this idea of world cuisine becoming completely available is definitely a trend," he says.

"People are becoming more sophisticated about what it takes to make authentic dishes," concludes Beal. "It's [also] this idea that you want to accomplish something," she says, recalling her day of paella earlier this year. "[Cooking] is a framing device you can use to get together and bond."

Where to meet the heat
Does your dusty old spice rack need some updating? Here are a few of the many online firms - some with retail stores - that cater to cooks interested in exploring ethnic cuisine:

La Tienda - Specializing in food and spices not traditionally available outside Spain. 888-472-1022 www.tienda.com

Jerry Adler

In Catalonia, on the northeast coast of Spain, it is said that a fish swims three times: in water when it's alive, in oil as it's cooked and then in the wine that washes it down. For the fish, we are suggesting chef Andy Nusser's dorada with blood sausage at Casa Mono (mariobatali.com), Mario Batali's electrifyingly original Spanish restaurant in Manhattan; and for the wine, a 1996 Montecillo Gran Riserva Rioja (about $28, retail). You will notice that the wine is red, a deep ruby red, which the Spanish are perfectly happy to drink with fish because, frankly, their white wines aren't all that hot. But the red Riojas, rich and fruity with a backbone of steel (years to look for: 1995, 1996, 1999 and 2001), are among the most underappreciated wine values on the planet.

For now, that is. How long that will last is anyone's guess, because Spanish food has begun to emerge from its accustomed venue in shadowy bars where college kids swill sangria to the mournful plunk of guitars. Imports of Spanish wine and olive oil have more than doubled in the past five years, Spanish cookbooks are filling the shelves and ingredients like dry-cured Serrano ham (imagine a denser, deeper-flavored prosciutto) and anchovy-stuffed olives are now available to American cooks from sources such as La Tienda tienda.com. Chorizo, the chewy, spicy sausage with a unique affinity for shellfish, eggs and potatoes, is emerging as the pancetta of the 21st century. Which can only mean that Spanish food—especially the Mediterranean-influenced cuisine of Catalonia, redolent of garlic and dripping with olive oil—is poised to leap over Indian and Thai in the long-running competition to be crowned the new Italian.

If it hasn't happened yet, it can only be due to the lack of a critical mass of recent Spanish immigrants (and therefore chefs). One of the leading proselytizers of Spanish food, author of the definitive cookbook "Catalan Cuisine" ($17.95; amazon.com), is the California-bred Colman Andrews. Ironically, Spanish food has derived much of its current cachet from the world-famous chef Ferran Adria of El Bulli, near Barcelona, and his disciples. These include Jose Andres (with a small empire of restaurants in and around Washington, D.C., including the legendary six-stool Minibar) and Francis Paniego, a Catalan chef who was tapped to run one of two restaurants in a Frank Gehry-designed hotel in the famous Rioja winery of Marques de Riscal (www.marquesderiscal.com). But Adria is famous mostly for his wildly inventive cutting-edge international cuisine, not classic Catalan dishes. Paniego shares the kitchen of his home restaurant in the Rioja region with his mother, Marisa Sanchez. "The mother has one side of the restaurant, serving traditional food," says one frequent visitor, "and he has the other. She makes a potato and chorizo stew, the son puts it in a blender and serves it in a cocktail glass."

With an olive, presumably. Catalan cooks make extensive and imaginative use of olives—Andrews's cookbook pairs them with duck, lamb chops, meatballs and veal—and capers, white beans, almonds, duck eggs, salt cod and anchovies. And, of course, rice, notably as the basis for a rich saffron-scented paella, the new risotto. By the same token, says Nusser of Casa Mono, handing over a plate of tender sweetbreads with baby fennel, Serrano ham is the new prosciutto di Parma and manchego cheese the new Parmigiano-Reggiano. Manchego, by the way, comes in three-, six- and 12-month versions, so you'd better taste them now to know which kind to ask for on your cheese plate, along with the ubiquitous quince paste. Of course you'll want to taste both the austere traditional Riojas and the fruit-forward modern ones—and decide if you prefer one that is 100 percent tempranillo, the leading Rioja grape, or a blend of mazuelo, graciano and grenache. But it's well worth the trouble. After all, Rioja could be the next Cabernet Sauvignon.

© 2006 Newsweek, Inc.

Antioxidant-rich olive oil protects against heart disease
Joan Raymond

"We start with olive oil as babies," says Antonio Diaz, a native of Spain and owner of tapas restaurant Costa del Sol in New York. Olive oil is mandatory at every meal in a typical Spanish home, and for good reason: The country makes more than 40 percent of the world's supply, although until recently the majority was sold and packaged outside its borders (the Italian olive oil you're using might actually be from Spain). Spanish olive oil producers are now labeling their own brands, and making a name for themselves as the source for top-quality oil. And with more than 262 different olive varieties (24 of which are used for oil), Spanish oils are more diverse than those from other countries.

Why to try it: Antioxidant-rich olive oil protects against heart disease by controlling LDL, or bad, cholesterol levels while raising HDL, or good, cholesterol. In fact, it's such a health boon that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) lets olive oil producers put a heart-health claim on their labels. (It's one of a handful of foods to get that blessing.) But new research shows olive oil may be more than just good for your ticker. Scientists from Philadelphia's Monell Chemical Senses Center discovered that olive oil has a compound with the same structure as ibuprofen, the widely used anti-inflammatory painkiller in Advil and Motrin. That means olive oil may offer the same benefits as low doses of the drug, including reduced risk of heart attack, stroke, some cancers, and even Alzheimer's disease. It also may help fight breast and colon cancers.

What to do with it: Light and aromatic, Spanish olive oil is easy to find at your local grocery store or online at Tienda.com for about $10 to $20 per 17-ounce bottle. Dunk whole-grain bread in olive oil, or drizzle over grilled vegetables. Or try our Shrimp With Garlic in Olive Oil recipe.

Spanish piquillos are perfect for stuffing
Marty Rosen


My pal Rob is a master wrapper. Stick him in a room with some savory fillings and a stack of phyllo dough, some wonton wrappers or a few flour tortillas, and 15 minutes later he'll come out with a perfect pyramid of the niftiest hors d'oeuvres you've ever seen.

Me? Not so much. I'm a kitchen klutz who can barely fold a piece of wax paper around a sandwich. The last time I tried to fold a burrito, it ended up looking like a preschooler's papier-mâché project.

Fortunately for me, there are peppers. Peppers can be diced, chopped or sliced, added to soups, sauces, stir-fries and salads, but the finest fate that can befall a pepper is to be stuffed -- their architecture just calls out: "Stuff me! Stuff me!"

And so I do.

I love cafeteria-style stuffed peppers filled with ground meat; I relish chiles relleno, oozing with melted cheese.

And even a klutz like me can scoop fillings into little peppers and serve up a colorful tray of fashionable appetizers.

I've experimented with a variety of smallish peppers, but lately I've had a crush on piquillo peppers -- or, to be precise, pimientos del piquillo (sticklers for proper Spanish pronunciation will say this as pi-kee-yo).

Piquillos (the name means little beak) are triangular peppers, about 2 inches long, that curve to a graceful point. In the Navarre region of Spain, the peppers are roasted in wood-burning ovens, then peeled and seeded by hand. The result is a sublime pepper with a smoky, spicy bite and a texture as smooth as fine suede.

In an e-mail, Miguel de la Torre, chef-owner of De La Torre's Spanish Restaurant and La Bodega (where piquillos sometimes can be found on the menu), wrote that in Spain piquillos are tapas bar staples, often filled with fish or shellfish, or served in a salad with salt cod and onion.

At home, I fill them with simple concoctions: Capriole goat cheese blended with roasted tomatoes or kalamata olives; spinach sautéed with minced onions and mushrooms.

But they'd be sublime with a spicy filling of sausage or crabmeat.

In the United States, piquillos have been hard to come by, but they're starting to pop up in cookbooks like Mark Bittman's "The Best Recipes In the World," and now they're showing up on grocers' shelves as well.

If you want authentic Spanish piquillos, you might have to shop the Web (I ordered a few jars of El Navarrico piquillos from www.latienda.com). Locally, you can find cans of Roland Peruvian piquillos at Creation Gardens and Burger's Market.

At a recent dinner party, where guests compared the Spanish and Peruvian varieties, results were mixed. Heat-seeking diners (like me) couldn't get enough of the Spanish piquillos; the heat-averse slightly preferred the Peruvians. But not a soul in the room didn't love them both.

Turning Virginia's Dry-Cured Pride Into New-World Prosciutto
Walter Nicholls


Fulks Run, VA - It's safe to say that none of Ron Turner's neighbors along the North Fork of the Shenandoah River, west of New Market, would dream of eating raw country ham. But the owner of Turner Ham House knows that his uncooked, 1-year-old ham can be thinly sliced and served like prosciutto, the $25-per-pound Italian import.

"You can take our ham and do everything you do with prosciutto," said Turner.

For generations, rural families in Virginia have been curing the hams that are a mainstay of Southern cooking. But now they believe that their $2.99-per-pound whole hams -- when cured for a year rather than the usual 70 days -- can compete successfully with elite salt-cured and air-dried European varieties. Even the U.S. government agrees that they are essentially the same product.

Pork purveyors plan to meet in Williamsburg in late March to come up with a strategy. They maintain that country ham, like fine wine, improves with age, and they want the public to take a fresh look.

They also want to change the way Americans think about cured pork, the way they eat it and even what they call it. Ham man Sam Edwards III, president of S. Wallace Edwards & Sons of Surry, Va., has a name in mind. Heritage Ham, anyone?

* * *

The basic curing procedure is essentially the same at most ham houses and hasn't changed since Jamestown colonists learned the secrets of meat curing from local Indians. The fresh, or green, hams, which come from the hind legs of hogs, are hand-rubbed with "flake salt" and a small amount of sodium nitrate. The salt preserves the meat, while the sodium nitrate sets the tawny, terra cotta color.

On a recent afternoon at the Turner Ham House, about 2,000 fresh, plump hams arrive for processing. For the Turners, it's a busy day -- the first day of the ham year.

Turner, 42, appears fit and natty in a matching work shirt and hat with the company logo. He's a fourth-generation ham man. His temperature- and humidity-controlled warehouse, built in 1966 and filled with drying pork, has a musky aroma. The warehouse sits on the bank of the river, next to the family's well-maintained croquet court and the Fulks Run Grocery that Turner runs with his wife Peggie.

Turner adds brown sugar to his cure, "rubbing it in on the butt and packing it into the hock, just like my great-grandfather did." After about seven weeks, the hams are washed and hung in net bags to dry, hocks up. After a minimum of 70 days of drying time, the legs can be sold as country ham. If dried for a year, the hams shrink and lose 25 to 30 percent of their weight. (Essentially, country ham and Smithfield ham are the same thing. But to carry the Smithfield name, the ham must be processed inside the corporate limits of Smithfield, Va.)

Turner would prefer to sell most of his cured hams in early summer to vendor at carnivals and country fairs, for the very practical reason that "the longer you have them, the longer the money is tied up with hams just hanging there." At the moment, Turner views the promotion of country ham as prosciutto as "just a side market we're playing with."

He does sell a relatively small amount of raw, cured ham that has been dried for a full year, usually to Washington area customers who make the 130-mile drive to his ham house. "They are always so excited when they get it," he said. The flavor is at first salty, then nutty and mellow.

We brought some of Turner's aged country ham to Santi Zabaleta, executive chef of the Spanish restaurant Taberna Del Alabardero, to sample in a blind taste test. Just inside the door of the downtown Washington restaurant is an ornate, five-seat tapas bar where a whole leg of Serrano ham is displayed on a carving stand.

Zabaleta took a bite of the Virginia country ham. It was, he said, "a little musty and very salty." After being told of the ham's provenance, he reached for more. And after another taste, Zabaleta amended his opinion.

"I'm pleasantly surprised. For what it is, it's very good for cooking, say, with green beans or stuffed into trout. I'd use it and promote this ham."

* * *

Candace Cansler, executive director of the Conover, N.C.-based National Country Ham Association, plans to attend the Williamsburg strategy session. "Our most serious issue is how to promote country ham as prosciutto and compete with imported ham, because it's the same product," she said.

Robert Post, director of labeling and consumer protection at the U.S. Food Safety and Inspection Service, confirms that as far as the U.S. Department of Agriculture is concerned, "country ham and prosciutto have the same requirements for how much and for how long salt and nitrates are applied and a drying time of not less than 70 days. They need only meet the standards of identity for dry-cured ham." More than 19 million pounds of dry-cured ham was imported to the United States from January to November 2005, most significantly from Canada, Italy, Germany and Spain.

Cansler is well aware that imported ham is perceived as being more valuable than its domestic country cousin and that it commands a higher price. At Turner Ham House, for example, a whole bone-in, 1-year-old leg that weighs 13 pounds goes for $39 (Turner also sells quarter-pound packages of boneless, sliced ham at $19.99 per pound). At Dean & DeLuca in Georgetown, prosciutto imported from Parma, Italy, or Serrano ham from Spain costs about $25 a pound.

So if domestic cured ham is made the same way as prosciutto and it tastes about the same, what's holding it back? Cansler is convinced that an image change is in order. And a name change -- something that would bring a new cachet to the product -- wouldn't hurt either. "We're considering Premium USA Hams," she said.

Importers, meanwhile, are raising the stakes. Next year, a Spanish ham called jamon Iberico will be available in the United States for the first time. It's produced from descendants of black-hoofed wild boars that forage for acorns in oak forests of southern and southwestern Spain and is said to have a gamey flavor and firm texture that comes from being aged for two to four years. The price will be about $1,000 for a 14-pound leg. Spanish importer La Tienda of Williamsburg says it already has accepted more than 200 orders.

Country ham purveyors are up against more than importers. Their neighbors, and their neighbors' children, also will need to be brought around if country ham is to become competitive with imported products.

"People around here, they're not eating melon balls wrapped with country ham," Turner said. Among country ham enthusiasts, who live primarily in the Southeast, a favorite way to prepare ham that has been cured an average of three to four months or longer is to roll slices in flour and fry them on the griddle. "That's what they like," Turner said. "That's what they have done for generations."

One of Cansler's strategies is to find ways to make country ham appeal to younger eaters by packaging it differently and in ready-to-eat portions. "Why, there was a 12-year-old boy in my house for breakfast the other day who had never had country ham before," she said. She told him it would taste like a McDonald's french fry. After a bite he said only, "Too salty."

Country ham, Cansler said, "may be an acquired taste. We have to fix that. We must reach the next generation."

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

We shopped for porcine serving pieces, porky specialty products and Virginia peanuts -- historically, a favorite food of Tidewater pigs.

From Spanish importer La Tienda, Williamsburg: ham carving set with sharpener, 10-inch blade in presentation box, $59; a ham holder for slicing country ham at tableside, $49.95; a handmade and painted ham platter, 7 ½ by 13 ½ inches, $39.50. La Tienda; 888-472-1022, www.tienda.com.

Hamming It Up

Until recently, developing a taste for jamón iberico made from acorn-fed black-footed pigs, wasn't easy. The USDA's ban on the Spanish delicacy was lifted only last year. And even though th first shipments of whole hams aren't due to arrive until 2008, importer La Tienda already has a list of 200 customers who have placed $199 deposits for hams that will cost upwards of $1,000 when they are finally delivered. For those without that much cash or patience, the first chorizo and sausages made from the meat of these precious pigs will be available early this year.

- Lisa McLaughlin