What : Festival Prosciutto do Parma
Where : Parma, Italy
When : 10 - 19 September 2010
The festival has been going on for the last 12 years and each year, the producers open their doors to visitors in what is called Finestre Aperte (Open Windows). There's a tour, a chance to taste the ham from whichever producer you are visiting and of course, with Italian hospitality, a few glasses of wine to go along with it.
Around the area there is the Museo del Prosciutto and Museo del Salame to visit as well. And all around town there are plenty of shops selling every single kind ham and salame the region makes.
The other highlight of the festival is palio which takes place in the center of Parma, on the last weekend. More of that later.
The producers often talk about the uniqueness of the region that gives the prosciutto its excellent taste - how the thick chestnut forest removes salt from the air as it blows across the region, how the sulphur rich salt preserves the sweetness of the ham, how the air is constantly damp from the Po river.
For me, the killer fact is the pigs in the region are fed whatever is left over from the production of Parmigiano Reggiano. After having eaten meat from animals that have been not been corn fed and tasted what chicken, lamb and beef ought to taste like, and how sweet they taste on their own, I'd like to think this must be the biggest reason.
If you think it is a crazy notion, watch Dan Baber on TED talk about what Eduardo Sousa's foie gras taste like.
(This is also the reason why I often think my rabbit back home would taste of fresh fields of grass, rosemary, thyme, sage, buckwheat with hints of pineapple, grape and strawberry, given how much he eats and given how he knowingly eats only the good stuff and cleverly ignores anything imported from the States.)
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| The average weight of a pig went from 82kg in the 1500s... |
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| ...to 180kg by 1960s. |
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| Salt cured to draw out water and start preservation. |
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| Hung to dry. These fill floors and floors of the temperature controlled building. On any floor you could be walking past at least 50 of these. The smell of the room changes depending on the |
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| Water leeching out of the hams. |
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| Smearing a layer of lard, salt and pepper to stop it from drying out too much. |
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| They let me taste the lard. Spread onto big thick slices of saltless Tuscan bread, it will not make a poor meal. |
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| Hung to dry again. When it is time, an inspector from the Consortium comes, sticks a needle made from horse bone into 5 places in the ham and smells if it is ready. |
