More Porky Business in Alájar and Aracena
Juan Carlos Navarro Fernández, Secadero de Jamones, Alájar
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| Spain |
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| Andalusia |
Again, we walked along the narrow streets of Alájar between the whitewashed buildings.
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| We may not have walked down this particular street on this particular journey, but we walked down several that were, to the untutored eye, indistinguishable |
Ángel had no difficulty navigating the short distance to Calle Ramón y Cajal, but to us all these streets still looked the same. Apart from a metal grill and a notice sellotaped to the door there was little to mark out the premises from the surrounding dwellings. Juan Carlos does put out a sign when he is open, but his retail business is a side-line, mostly he works within the jamón trade.
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| The premises of Juan Carlos Navarra Fernández, Alájar |
Ángel unlocked the door and let us in. To step over the threshold was to become comfortingly enveloped in the heavy cocoon-like smell of Iberian ham. According to popular wisdom the aroma of frying bacon has an almost mystical power to subvert a weak-willed vegetarian. The smell of curing ham does not have the same simple attraction, it is subtler and more nuanced, its appeal deeper, even atavistic. Humans are omnivores; in our hunter-gatherer past we survived on fruit and vegetables – and meat when we could catch it, and the odour of curing ham reminds us why we went to all that trouble. Meat was important then and is important now, though it has become plentiful and easily obtained so we tend to overdo it and too often treat our food animals without respect – a fate that, happily, has not befallen the cosseted Iberian Black Pig. I am, obviously, no vegetarian but I enjoy an occasional vegetarian meal or meat free day. I would go further and acknowledge that many of us (and me particularly) eat too much meat for our health and for the sustainability of human civilization. We should cut back, but we should not cut out.
In Juan Carlos’ well ventilated upper room the hams hang by their toes, curing quietly. They lose 20% to 40% of their weigh in the process, but none of their flavour which concentrates wonderfully.
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| Ham curing in Juan Carlos Navarra Fernández's upper room, Alajar |
Juan Carlos is a secadero de jamones, literally a drier of ham, though in a well-ventilated room away from extremes of temperature they largely do the drying – or curing – themselves.
Downstairs are hams, sausages and other cuts ready for sale. We selected a couple of vacuum packs of sliced ham, a lomo (a cylinder of cured loin some 30 cm long and maybe 4cm in diameter) of much the same quality as the hams, and a shorter, fatter morcilla (a black pudding, but firmer than its British equivalent). In the absence of Juan Carlos we could not buy them, but put them aside so we could find them again tomorrow.
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| Produce ready for market, Juan Carlos, Secadero, Alájar |
Buying the Pork for Dinner in Aracena
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| Aracena |
The road from Alájar reaches Aracena by the town’s small industrial/trading estate. We ignored it yesterday, but today swung onto the estate, passed Hierros Melcan Aluminios and stopped outside Jamones Vazquez, purveyors of Carnes Ibericas to the trade and the general public.
Outside it looked like a warehouse, inside it was an Aladdin’s cave of pork products, including a whole wall of black label hams and shoulders. Black label (see yesterday’s post) is the highest quality, free range, acorn fed, pure bred Jamón Iberico, arguably the finest ham in the world (though locally they brook no argument) and also the most expensive; shoulders routinely start around £400, the larger hams at well over £600. Guinness World Records tells me that the ‘most expensive leg of ham commercially available is an Iberian "Manchado de Jabugo" retailing at €4,100 (£3,192.76; $4,620.28) [March 2016] and is sold by Dehesa Maladúa’ . (update at end) That particular ham may not feature in my photograph, but we were in the heart of the Jabugo production region, so these are all Jabugo black label hams, the crème de la crème, to employ an inappropriate metaphor.
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| Wall of ham, Jamones Vazquez, Aracena |
Ángel had been, quite rightly, dismissive of some of the prices. He objected to the rich but ignorant buying extremely expensive hams because they can, not because the appreciate them, and pushing prices beyond the pockets of ordinary mortals. I think some recent issue with Cristiano Ronaldo had particularly irked him – outstandingly talented footballer as he may be (Ronaldo, not Ángel!), he has that effect on many people. Fortunately, you need very few, very thin slices of ham balanced on a chunk of local crusty bread to feel you are eating like a king – if not quite a professional footballer.
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| Jamones Vazquez, Aracena |
With Lucy we looked at the cuts of fresh meat; lagarto, lomo, pluma, presa, secreto and solomillo (there are others) are not all unfamiliar. Lucy bought some pluma (top loin and, allegedly, feather shaped) and a second we have unfortunately forgotten.
Weighed down with the pork for the dinners of all the posada’s guests we made our way back to Alájar.
Lunch, Cooking and Dinner (it’s all about food!)
An amble round the village somehow inevitably led to La Parra, the bar in the centre. A beer and a plate of goat’s cheese would have made a perfect light lunch had not the standard Spanish beer glass been a miniscule 20cl. Two beers and a plate of goat’s cheese, though, did the trick admirably. Business was good for a Thursday lunchtime, filling the tables in the little square. The clientele was largely the retired (like us) but the traditional extended Spanish lunch hour permitted a few younger people to join the party.
We spent most of the afternoon with Lucy. In her small but well-equipped kitchen she produces a three-course meal for 12 most days. Alájar is well provided with restaurants so she does not feel the need to cook every day, sometimes preferring ‘to spread the love', as she put it.
Andalusia is the homeland of cold soups, gazpacho being the name that everyone knows, but salmorejo and ajoblanca are common local variants. The gazpacho bequeathed by the Romans consisted of olive oil, vinegar, garlic and water, thickened with stale bread. This rather basic concoction was vastly improved by the addition of tomatoes in the 19th century and once cucumber and peppers had joined the ensemble, gazpacho was ready to go international. Modern variations can include anything from avocado to strawberries (I would need convincing on that one). Lucy had a name for her version which I have unfortunately forgotten; it included beetroot but stayed true to the spirit of gazpacho. It was our first course in the evening, and very good it was, too. Lynne has previously been resistant to the concept of cold soups; on a wet Wednesday in a Staffordshire January the idea is, I concede, singularly unattractive, but in the Andalusian sunshine…..
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| A variation on gazpacho - a delight at the right time and in the right place (and this was both) |
We chopped onions and cracked walnuts, but were otherwise spectators. The Posada’s reputation depends on these dinners being perfect, the fumbling of amateur hands could not be risked. For the gazpacho and the sauces Lucy employed a clever gizmo that perhaps everyone knows but was new to us. Her blender, slicer, shredder not only does all those things, but also heats, boils, simmers, and stirs tirelessly.
She produced two sauces, one with sweet chestnuts, onions and olive oil, the other using walnuts, garlic, brandy and orange juice, a brave combination. We did not see the pork cooked, that happened later, and meat of this quality deserves quick, simple cooking. It was a sumptuous main course, the pork lived up to our expectations, the chestnut sauce a perfect match for its sweetness. I was less impressed by the walnut sauce, the brandy and orange juice seemed to be fighting each other for my attention, but others might disagree.
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| Iberian pork with potatoes steamed in oil, courgettes and two sauces (out of shot) |
As Lucy worked and we watched, the conversation ranged from the Spanish preference for eating seafood cold to the British preference for political self-destruction.
Once all was done, we wandered off at our leisure leaving Lucy with several other jobs. She and Ángel work extraordinarily hard at making their Posada run like clockwork and creating a relaxing experience for everyone else.
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| Lemon mousse dessert. I have no idea where Lucy magic-ed this from |
All that remained for us was to eat the dinner, which you have already seen above. So that concludes our Iberian Pork and Ham Experience at the Posada San Marcos in Alájar, except…
27-Sept-2019
…after breakfast we had to stroll round to Juan Carlos the secadero for the goodies we had set aside yesterday. The time, effort and degree of inspection that goes into producing these things means they are never cheap, but we paid a little over half the price they would have fetched on the export market. [Jan 2020: the jamón we gave to people we hoped would appreciate it, the loin (lomo) provided us a lunch a week until Christmas, each one of them a joy. We still have a stub end of morcilla]
Then we set off for our fortnight in the Algarve where we would forsake the world’s finest pork for the world’s freshest seafood and enjoy a further two weeks of unbroken sunshine.
The information about the world's most expensive ham was correct when I wrote it. The Guinness Records page linked to now has an even more expensive ham but 'Iberian bellota' is all they say about the ham - they seem more interested in the Japanese retailer selling it.
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