Here's the scoop on what 2006 is likely to dish out
Special to The Sun
.....Finally, if you've ever savored Jamón Ibérico, the distinctively flavored meat of the Spanish black-foot pigs who dine mostly on acorns, you'll be delighted to know that a family-owned Spanish food retailer based in Williamsburg, Va. www.tienda.com, soon will start importing the first ibérico products available in America, such as pork loin, chorizo and other sausages.
© 2006 The Baltimore Sun
The Saveur 100
THE SAVEUR 100
BEST IBERIAN BAR SNACK
4. We're loco for plump aceitunas rellenas de anchoa, Spanish Anchovy-stuffed olives. They're slightly sweet and more than slightly briny - and they deliver the savor of earth and sea in a single bite.
Ham Right! Best of Spain Finally Coming to U.S.
Monica Eng, Tribune Staff reporter
On my way back from Madrid last spring, I was caught red-handed with half a kilo of Spain's finest ham in my bag.
The trauma inspired me to whine about tits confiscation and investigate the Byzantine food regulations enforced by the Department of Homeland Security at our nation's airports - specifically when it came to acorn-fed Spanish swine.
In the course of my research I discovered that La Tienda, an American importer of Spanish food, was in the process of trying to relieve my hamless misery. The company was working to get the first Spanish slaughterhouse certified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, thus legalizing the importation of certain acorn-fed ham called jamon Iberico de bellota. In September the importer was victorious. Woohoo!
This means that every pig that is "sacrificed" (La Tienda's word) at this newly certified facility in southern Spain will be approved for export to the U.S. But these products take a while to cure and in the near future (early 2006) only Spanish chorizo sausage and cured loin called lomo will be available. Sometime between 2007 and 2008, however, folks will reportedly be able to purchase a whole leg of the prized buttery and nutty Iberico ham for delivery in the U.S.
One click away from the perfect treat
Jon Bonné, MSNBC
... Lastly on the meat front, it's been a banner year for ham lovers. After years of lobbying, the federal government has given the nod to Ibérico ham, cured from pigs allowed to roam the fields of western Spain, feasting on acorns. That nutty flavor infuses the ham, considered without equal by the Spaniards and even the most discerning pig aficionados. None available this season, but you can plunk down a $199 deposit for orders to be filled in 2007-08. Better love that lucky ham fan: Whole hams will cost upwards of $800, depending on the euro's valuation. Available from Tienda.com, whose owner, Don Harris, helped negotiate the details that allowed for importation...
Food Stuff
Florence Fabricant
The Department of Agriculture has agreed to allow the import of products from the famed black-foot Ibérico pigs raised on acorns in Spain's rugged West. Jamones Fermín, a family-owned company near Salamanca, is the first to obtain approval and has started to slaughter the pigs. "If all goes well we may have chorizo by Christmas," said Don Harris, owner of La Tienda, a source for Spanish products. The glory of these pigs, the cured hams, will be available in about two years. "These products will require consumer education," said Raul Martín, an owner of Jamones Fermín. He added, "Not only are they more expensive, but they have a stronger flavor, and the hams especially have more fat."
A Moorish Delicacy for the Tapas Plate
Mojama is a Spanish delicacy with history. For more than 600 years, loins of tuna have been salt-cured and air-dried in Andalusia. The Moors who ruled the region until 1492 called it musama.
Thin, ruddy, slightly translucent slices simply traced with olive oil are served as tapas. Mojama is salty but not aggressively so, and has a pleasant chewiness. Pieces can be tossed in a salad, as you would use bacon, and slivers can garnish a pasta dish, as bottarga would.
Dean & DeLuca has it in stock in the store for $44 a pound, or about $1 a slice. Mojama can also be ordered from tienda.com for $18.50 for a half-pound, plus shipping.
Life & Style - Cooking
Georgina Gustin Of the Post-Dispatch
If you’re thinking of putting together a Spanish summer feast, you might want to master a few key words, and preferably say them with authority and flourish: gazpacho, paella, sangria and flan.
Make sure you roll the “r” in sangria and shorten the “a” in flan. Exclaim the words with Castillian flair.
Everything will taste better.
Of course, actually making the food is important, too, and paella, the rice-based, unofficial national dish of Spain, will require a little bit of practice (or luck) to get just right. In Spain, where paella (pronounced pie-AY-ya) is the traditional Sunday meal, cooks have argued for generations about the best route to achieving perfection. But don’t be intimidated — the results are amazing, even if you’re a beginner, and are about as beautiful and celebratory as food can be. You’ll even gain a few words in the process.
The dish is cooked in a low-rimmed, round pan called a paellera, made traditionally of thin carbon steel that conducts heat quickly. A mixture of onions, garlic and tomato, called sofrito, serves as the flavor base. When the rice is cooked, the heat gets cranked up under the pan, so the rice starts crackling and turning brown, forming a caramelized bottom crust. Achieving that crust — called socarrat, and considered by some Spaniards to be an aphrodisiac — is the ultimate goal of the paella cook.
I remember first eating paella as a child at an old Spanish roadside inn, not far from the Mediterranean coast. We sat in a white-stucco-walled courtyard at tables covered in white cloths. The paella came out of the kitchen, carried like a vibrant disc, colored orange with saffron-infused broth and studded with black mussels.
I’ve made a couple of paellas since then, but they were never as good, or even close, with nothing resembling the socarrat. It was only recently that one of my brothers, who’s a former chef, told me about a Web site where you can order authentic paella pans from Spain. I was inspired by his efforts to plop down $54 for a 22-inch paella pan and try for the elusive crust myself.
Paella pans come as small as 10 inches to serve one to two people and as large as 52 inches, to serve up to 200. The one I bought serves seven to 10 people, so I decided to build an evening around the paella and invite a few friends to sample my efforts.
The menu, I thought, should be of Spanish classics — the tastes I associate with Spain.
I started by making flan, the popular custard dessert with a caramelized sugar topping. Flan needs to chill in the refrigerator for at least four hours and can stay in for two days, so it’s ideal if you want to get dessert out of the way. I chose an untraditional recipe, flavored with lemon and cinnamon.
After I put the flan in the refrigerator, I started on the gazpacho, the famed cold vegetable soup of southern Spain.
Food historians attribute gazpacho’s origins to the Andalusia region, dating to a time when much of Spain was part of the Islamic world.
Gazpacho originally was a poor man’s soup, made of bread, water and oil; through time, it morphed into today’s “liquid salad” of tomatoes, garlic, peppers, onions, cucumber, oil, vinegar and bread crumbs or croutons. There are hundreds of permutations of gazpacho. I used one that I consider the traditional gazpacho, loading it with croutons and avocado for garnish.
I chose a recipe for seafood paella and added chicken to the mix. Before everyone arrived, I started the prep work, peeling garlic, grating onion and tomato and creating a broth from shrimp shells. I sautéed the chicken thighs (which work better than chicken breasts for paella, I was told) and the shrimp and scallops in the paella pan, then set them aside.
My husband made the sangria, the deceptively alcoholic wine-and-fruit potion that can sneak up on you if you’re not careful. We chose a recipe with brandy and sparkling water, which brightened the taste a bit, as sangria can get a little syrupy and cloying.
When our guests arrived, we poured the sangria and put out a plate of aged Manchego, a nutty sheep’s milk cheese, and Serrano ham, a robust cured ham that’s something like prosciutto. The combination of Spanish specialties is classic.
As our friends stood around our kitchen, I worked on finishing the paella.
Versions of paella are limitless, and paella cooks each have their own interpretations. But ultimately there is no single right way. You can throw just about anything in a paella that you think suits it.
The one essential element is a short or medium-grain rice that absorbs flavors better than long-grain varieties. The ultimate variety is Spanish Bomba rice, a short-grain rice that is said to soak up flavors more than other types, but any medium-grain rice can work well.
First, I sautéed grated onion, tomato and garlic for about 15 minutes, until the mixture turned almost maroon in color. I then sautéed the rice for a couple of minutes before adding the broth. I shook the pan to even out the rice, which barely covered the bottom of the pan, and after about 20 minutes, when the broth was absorbed, I turned up the heat, keeping my fingers crossed during the final, critical two minutes.
(I’ve cooked paella on a grill, gas burners and electric stovetop, and I think a grill works best because the heat source is largest and is distributed evenly. You can throw a few herbs, such as rosemary or thyme, on the grill, which will infuse the paella with flavor.)
My husband poured a couple of bottles of French rosé, which we thought would go nicely with the gazpacho and the paella, while I waited for the rice to crackle. One of our friends came over to the stove, and we both bent down, putting our ears next to the pan.
I got crackle. Then a burning smell. I pulled the pan off the heat.
We sat down to our gazpacho and, a few minutes later, I served up the paella, diving into the rice with a spatula. I hit the bottom of the pan and started scraping little bits of burnt rice turned up, but so did the occasional sheet of perfect caramelized crust.
We sat around our dining room table and dove in, finishing an entire 22 inches of paella with ease. Then we rounded the night out with some nicely inverted flans, dripping with caramel sauce.
Success! Or, as they might say on the Iberian peninsula: Exito!
======================
... www.tienda.com, has pans and a wide selection of Spanish specialties, including hams, cheeses, saffron, almonds, olives and Bomba rice.
Cookstuff
Betty Baboujon
This hand-painted ceramic dish helps with the trickiest part of making the Spanish tortilla: the flip at the end. When the bottom of the tortilla has set, hold the dish by the pedestal, cover the tortilla in the skillet and invert it onto the dish. Then, slip it back into the pan to finish. And though it's marked "for turning the tortilla," it's also for serving it. The dish is handmade in Puente de Arzobispo, in central Spain, and designs vary from dish to dish.
Spanish tortilla flipper/server (10 inches in diameter), $29.50, from online retailer La Tienda.
Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times
Sichuan's Signature Is Now Legal Again
Sometimes the federal Department of Agriculture can be tough on connoisseurs. Its rules, set to protect the health of Americans and American crops, often mean that specialty foods cannot be sold unless strict conditions are met.
The Sichuan peppercorn is a case in point. Since 1968 it has been illegal to import this spice, the dried berry of the prickly ash tree, because it might pose a threat to the American citrus industry. The trees can harbor a canker, harmless to humans but contagious among plants and for which there is no known cure. It has not been proven that the dried berries can transmit the disease but it is so devastating that about three years ago the Department began enforcing the ban in earnest.
Despite the ban, Sichuan peppercorns, an essential ingredient in many Sichuan dishes, were still being sold as recently as about a year ago, especially in Chinatowns. Then last year the department approved a treatment to destroy the canker, heating the berries to at least 140 degrees for 20 minutes.
Now, many spice dealers, including Adriana's Caravan in Grand Central Terminal, and several shops in Chinatown, sell Sichuan peppercorns in bags bearing labels stating that they have been heat-treated. Some stores in Chinatown sell them without the label.
Untreated Sichuan peppercorns have a slightly rosier color than treated ones, and a more pronounced effect.
Herman Tang, the manager of Wu Liang Ye restaurant on West 48th Street, said he thought the heat-treated peppercorns imparted about 10 percent less heat and tingling sensation in the mouth than untreated ones. So cooks going for the signature fire of Sichuan dishes would be advised to increase the quantity of peppercorns. It's a small price to pay.
But no price, as yet, will enable a shopper in the United States to get around another of the Department's bans on jamón Ibérico, the most prized cured hams from Spain. Those come from black-foot pigs, or patas negras, raised in the western and southern part of the country. And if the hams do become available, the price is likely to be around $1,000 for a 16-pound ham with the bone.
The Department of Agriculture would not allow these hams to be sold here until Spanish slaughterhouses and processing plants met federal requirements for hygiene. Spanish producers were unwilling to invest in the plants because it was all they could do to fill the demand for the hams in Spain. But a few years ago they began increasing production of the pigs to expand the export market.
Some aficionados have already placed $199 deposits for the hams with Don Harris, the owner of Tienda, a mail-order company in Williamsburg, Va. Mr. Harris said that after nearly 10 years of trying to import the hams, he is more optimistic than ever.
"Two or maybe three slaughterhouses have been built according to U.S. government specifications," Mr. Harris said, "and we're hoping they may get approved this fall."
Abel Rodríguez, the international manager of Covap, a cooperative of 10,500 pig farmers, which completed its new, $30 million plant near Córdoba in January, said his group has been working with a consultant for more than two years to help with the building and the approval process.
Serrano hams, which have been available in the United States for several years, are cured in Spain, but the pigs are raised in Denmark, the Netherlands and Poland and slaughtered there.
The black-foot pigs, on the other hand, live only in Spain. Their habitat, where the free-ranging pigs forage for acorns, is said to make an essential contribution to the flavor of the ham.
If the slaughterhouses are approved, Mr. Rodríguez said that chorizo sausages will be ready for shipping by the middle of next year, followed by the loins (lomo), and, before the end of 2007, the shoulder (paleta).
The first hams, with their complex, salty-sweet, deep maroon flesh streaked with buttery white fat, are not expected before 2008.
Shopping Guide
tienda.com
A window to the best of Spain. America's most comprehensive inventory of quality Spanish food selected by a knowledgeable and dedicated family. Immediate delivery.
Copyright 2005 The Taunton Press
How I got busted -- for harboring ham
by Monica Eng - Tribute Staff reporter
So there I was at O'Hare, sleepily waiting to clear customs after a long flight from Spain, when that darn beagle came along and ruined everything.
Barking and lunging at my canvas bag, the four-legged showoff was followed by a customs agent who asked if I was packing any fruit or meat.
"Just some Spanish ham and cheese," I said, innocently.
"I am sorry but you are not allowed to bring in any pork products to the U.S. from Spain," she said. "You are going to have to give me the ham."
Still in a state of shock -- while the dog sat beaming and waiting for praise -- I dug into my bag and pulled out the fragrant waxed paper package bought at Madrid's Museo del Jamon (Museum of Ham) just that morning for $50. I breathed in one last whiff of the smoky, nutty, buttery aroma that characterizes this cured ham carved from only the finest, acorn-fed Iberian pigs.
Then I handed the jamon Iberico de bellota over to the authorities.
In all my years of bringing back edible treasure from abroad, this was my first run-in with the law. And thus my introduction to the ever-changing rules of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services.
In general, APHIS permits select produce and meats into the U.S. from certain foreign lands, but Spanish swine is totally off limits. That's because Spain, unlike some other European countries, does not host a single slaughterhouse that has yet been certified by the USDA.
Virginia-based Spanish food importer Jonathan Harris, however, is working to change that. In an effort to decriminalize this ham habit, he's working with a Spanish meat outfit called Covap on a custom-built plant in Pozoblanco, Spain, that is due for inspection by the USDA this fall. If everything checks out, he hopes to import Jamon Iberico to the States by 2007 or 2008.
In the meantime, however, the U.S. continues to view Spanish meat products as risks for swine fever and foot-and-mouth disease. Consequently, it's illegal for individuals to try to import any meats from Spain, even vacuum-sealed packages of it. In fact, according to the Animal Protection Act, I could have potentially faced a $50,000 fine or 10-year jail sentence.
Although she has never seen someone do actual jail time for food trafficking, Agriculture Inspections Chief for the Port of Chicago Marie Martin takes ham hiding seriously. Her division used to fall under the auspices of the United States Department of Agriculture. Today it's a part of the Department of Homeland Security.
During her 17 years in the business, Martin has seen "just about everything" pass through O'Hare.
When asked for specifics, she rattles off the statistics from this past December at the airport where her crew confiscated roughly 4,000 pounds of outlawed meat and oversaw 3,183 seizures of fruits, vegetables and plants.
When asked about interceptions of dangerous unpasteurized cheeses, Martin re-sponded, disappointingly, "We don't seize a lot of cheese."
Getting back to my case, I asked Martin just what my options were. For example, could I have just started stuffing slices of the ham in my mouth?
"Consumption on the spot is not necessarily illegal," she said. "but we would have tried to keep the situation under control. And because the ham is so salty, I think you might have regretted it for the rest of your life."
While many angry foodies envision their confiscated goods ending up at weekly lavish feasts in the customs workers' break room, Martin insists that the seized items are incinerated -- some after a risk assessment.
Harris says he has heard every jamon sob story and smuggling trick in the book.
"One guy wrote in to tell us he was fined $1,000 for bringing it in," Harris said. "And we've heard every strategy for getting it past customs, from putting it in the baby's bag to mailing it with the label 'adult material' to putting a decoy sausage on top of the bag and then the good stuff on the bottom."
Martin admits that, much as her department tries, with more than a million passengers streaming through O'Hare each year, they can't snag everything. But she is neither impressed nor amused by the pork- smuggling tricks.
"We are clued into these [strategies] and they are poor advice," she says more than a little annoyed. "These kinds of violations are where you get into those larger fines and it is really not worth it. You may get a ham through this time but eventually you will get caught."
So is a package of this fat-marbled treasure really worth becoming a Homeland Security target for the rest of your life?
Of course not. So my advice is to pig out on as much jamon as you can while in Iberico friendly zones. And then just try to erase its exquisite memory from your brain.
- - -
What you need to know
When it comes to bringing in restricted items, Agriculture Inspections Chief Marie Martin says ignorance is no excuse.
Certain agricultural items are forbidden because of the fear they could carry pests and diseases, according to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency.
Because customs rules change all the time, Martin advises any traveler thinking about toting food back to the States to contact the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service office at 301-734- 3277, or visit the Web site: www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/travel/ clearing(unde rscore)goods/ agri(underscore)prod(underscore)inus.xml.
In short, here's what you need to know:
- All travelers entering the U.S. must declare meats, fruits, vegetables, plants, seeds, animals, and plant and animal products (including soup or soup products) they may be carrying.
- Depending on the country of origin, some fruits, vegetables and plants may be brought into the United States without advance permission, if they are declared, inspected and found free of pests.
- Fresh, dried, or canned meats and meat byproducts are prohibited entry into the United States from most foreign countries because of the continuing threat of foot-and-mouth disease, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease), and other animal diseases. Still, whole legs of Italy's prosciutto di Parma, for instance, trot in with travelers each year as long as they are accompanied by proper docu-mentation regarding their processing.
- Hunting trophies, game animal carcasses, and hides are severely restricted.
- Here are some products that are not forbidden: breads, cakes, cookies, candies, coffee, fish, canned fruits, garlic cloves, mushrooms, nuts, seaweed, truffles, canned or processed vegetables.
Monica Eng
---
How they are slaughtered
Spanish food importer and jamon Iberico enthusiast Jonathan Harris lives in Virginia's swine country and is familiar with the life and death of the average American porker. What he saw when he went to Spain to check out the newest methods of "processing" of the precious black Iberian pig was a much different story.
For starters, these free-range hogs traditionally spend most of their lives roaming and munching on grasses and herbs in oak forests of Southwestern Spain. Between November and March, however, they grow plump on a feast of nothing but acorns, which gives their fat a signature softness, golden hue and nutty undercurrent.
When it comes time to slaughter them at around 2 years old, the prize porkers are gathered together by family groups in comfy pens for one last good night's sleep, according to Harris. On their final morning, he says, they are woken with "a gentle warm water bath and soothed with classical music."
Finally, they are escorted to a small room where they are gently put to sleep with gas, so they "can float off to piggy heaven," Harris says. "This treatment is not just to be nice but to reduce stress, which can release adrenaline into their bodies and affect the meat."
Monica Eng
Truly Spanish Chorizo, in America at Last
If you've ever experimented with chorizo, the pork sausage cured with paprika and garlic, you know how persuasive its full aroma and deep clinging heat can be. You might have sliced it up and stirred it into paella, chopped it into little cubes that were swept up into an omelet or infused it in stew to give it a smoky edge. Its robust flavor and warm, tingly spice were distinctive, giving everything it touched the feel of Spanish cooking.
But what you may not have noticed is that the chorizo was not from Spain. For a long time, chorizo was not approved for importing. In 1997 the Department of Agriculture and the Spanish government gave one chorizo maker, Palacios, from Rioja, permission, but it wasn't until last October that chorizo began entering in any quantity. Now, stores can't seem to get enough of it. The chorizo, which comes in long, firm sausages and shorter, slightly denser links, is in grocery stores like Butterfield Market, Fairway and Citarella in Manhattan.
If you have never been to Spain and nibbled on slivers of chorizo before dinner, the Palacios will be a revelation. When you taste it, you suddenly realize all the compromises you made. American chorizo brands like Quijote and Corte's are good, hearty sausages. But they are nothing like those from Spain, which are smoky, earthy, sweet and quite tangy.
Sausages are often used as a background flavor. They give body to meat sauces, form the base for stuffings and, rich as they are, can be rendered for sautéing. But chorizo departs from most others in one aspect: its flavor is so powerful that it does not influence a dish subtly. It burns its imprint into its very foundation. It will streak scrambled eggs with its orange oils and make them so full and rich that you would not think of adding a single other ingredient. It can make a thin broth feel hearty, and can wrap sautéed potatoes with layers of roasted spices and garlic.
In many ways chorizo is a distillation of the core ingredients — peppers, garlic and pork — in Spanish cuisine, and in essence a distillation of its terroir. This came clear to me last spring as a friend and I approached Jabugo, a small village buried in a blanket of clouds about two hours northwest of Seville. Winding our way to the town, we took in lush hills speckled with pigs, freely roaming, their snouts foraging in thick grasses beneath gnarled holm oaks and cork oaks.
The period from late fall through early spring is called the montanera, or acorn season, when pigs feed on the acorns of these trees, each eating about 22 to 26 pounds of acorns a day. The Iberian pig, which is descended from the wild boar of southern Europe, is not a handsome specimen. It has drooping ears, a long snout, thin legs and dark hair. But its meat has a dense striping of fat and intense flavor, which produces the most sought-after cured hams in Spain.
In Jabugo, a town with modest charm, there was no mistaking the main trade. A warm, sweet smoke filled the air. Sánchez Romero Carvajal, one of the largest cured pork producers in the area, sat on the edge of town in a large building built in 1901. It was oddly civilized for a factory, with a central courtyard for employee breaks and long tiled hallways.
The pigs are brought into Sánchez Romero when they are 14 to 16 months old. Once slaughtered, the legs are cured in a two- to three-year process for jamón Ibérico. The loins are made into caña de lomo, and the meat from the shoulder is used to make chorizo. It is an incredibly simple process. The meat is ground, then mixed with paprika, garlic, salt and a dash of sherry in a machine that thunders and churns. The spiced meat marinates overnight before being stuffed into casings and tied.
The next part is controlled largely by nature. The workers at the factory simply respond. The sausages are hung close together on the ceiling of a large, dim room. The roof is made of tiles, spaced so that you can see tiny bits of light through the cracks. There are screens on the windows but no glass. When it is hot and dry, the windows are closed, and burlap mats are soaked in water and laid on the floor of the curing rooms. When it is cold, the shutters are closed. At all times, a gentle, smoldering oak fire sits in a low barrel on the floor.
The air is dense and moist, and all you hear is the crackle of the wood. The men move the barrels and rearrange the sausages as the curing progresses. It takes a few weeks to cure chorizo and sometimes up to four months, depending on the size and the time of year. During that time, the meat dries and absorbs the smoke — smoke from the very wood whose fruit flavors the meat.
Not all chorizo is made in exactly the same way. Each region has its own tics. In fact, some producers, including Palacios, do not actually smoke their sausages. But even air-cured chorizo like these have a mysteriously smoky quality. Jesús García, the export manager for Sánchez Romero, said: "With chorizo, we are talking about a type of sausage. For us chorizo means pork, fat and paprika."
And sometimes, oregano, nutmeg and hot paprika, too.
"Of course," he added, "paprika was not known until the New World was discovered, but there were other sausages. You can still find today in Spain chorizo without paprika. It's called white chorizo."
Like all foods with terroir, the chorizo tastes a little bit of the air and the earth, the very character of the region. All of this makes for a flavor distinguishable from almost any other chorizo. The Palacios chorizo has everything but the Iberian pork.
No slaughterhouses in Spain have won approval from American authorities. Like other Spanish companies that export pork products to the United States, Palacios must import the pork from approved slaughterhouses in other European countries. Their pork comes from Denmark, and is cured using the Spanish method.
Because of the strict standards, Palacios is just one of three Spanish companies exporting cured pork products to the United States. "The problem," Mr. García of Sánchez Romero explained, "is the American authorities do not recognize the European Union's standards for production. They want companies to follow their own standards. And some companies do not want to change. We already sell around the world. We don't need to sell in the U.S."
And so this could be why the trade has not yet blossomed. But if New York City grocery stores are any indication, demand could be very much like that for Italian cured meats, which after a slow start have flooded the market over the last two decades. (Outside of specialty markets, Palacios is available at www.tienda.com, a Spanish foods Web site. Or you may call Palacios in Miami at 305 758-1089.)
Even lacking the Iberian pork, Palacios chorizo, either sweet or hot, is far superior to American brands like Conte's, which is springy and mild, and to the firm, sweet Quijote, which is quite good but markedly different. Not all the chorizos in the United States are made to mimic the Spanish. You can find Mexican chorizo, which has a finer texture and forceful heat, and sometimes Portuguese chorizo, which is softer.
The best way to get a feel for Spanish chorizo (and one of the best dishes I discovered) is to blend it with eggs. I scattered slivers of chorizo in a nonstick pan and heated them until they began to sizzle. Then I added a little olive oil, cracked eggs into the pan and began stirring quickly, swirling the eggs around the pan and folding them over each other until just barely cooked.
The fat in the chorizo coats the eggs, brightening them to a saffron yellow. And there is something about the chorizo that makes the eggs taste hearty and almost creamy. You will find this dish in Spain, where it is called revueltos de chorizo. Or, often, it is added to tortilla, which is more like an omelet. Because the eggs are not moved around the pan, though, the flavor of the chorizo is less dominant. It is helpful to think of chorizo in terms of bacon or garlic: a pungent flavor that you can add at the beginning of cooking to scent the dish. Spanish cooks sometimes treat chorizo more like a bouquet garni, or a bouillon cube. Every region seems to have a simmered bean dish, and invariably chorizo is added to the beans as they simmer. The beans soak up the chorizo's racy tang and garlic, and together they become smoky, faintly spicy and mellow. If you add other meats and a few vegetables, you have something not too far from cassoulet.
These all seem like natural pairings, but chorizo is perhaps best with something you might never think of, fish and shellfish. You can add it to the pan with cockles or clams as you steam them open. You can slip slices of it into grouper like cloves of garlic in a leg of lamb, as Daniel Orr, the chef at Guastavino, does before sautéing it. Or you can simply render its fat and sprinkle the pungent orange juices over roasted cod. The chorizo adds background flavor and a kind of intangible body and definition to these dishes. It is too bad the Spanish do not have a word for umami.
Before Palacios chorizo began arriving from Spain, Patricia Yeo, the chef at AZ, had been seeking that elusive flavor. She had given up on domestic brands and began making her own. She marinates cubes of pork shoulder and pork belly in a mixture of paprika, garlic, brown sugar, Aleppo pepper and salt, then grinds the meat, packs it into lamb casings and smokes it. I altered her method a little for my kitchen. I used smoked paprika and skipped the casings, preferring to use it crumbled. It's very easy, and an excellent alternative, worth relying on if your store doesn't yet carry Palacios.
But if things continue to go well, you won't have to worry anyway. Palacios chorizo has, at the very least, cracked open the door to importing. And there are many more delicious cured meats behind it. There is caña de lomo, a sublime cured loin; morcón, which is similar to chorizo, only a little fatter; morcillas, the tasty blood sausages; and enough other creations to use up every part of the pig. They are just waiting for our government to catch up with Americans' appetite for it all.
