Tapas Menu -Take 1

It's a summer Saturday. Heat ripples the air, there's barely a breeze, and you're still slightly smarting from the revelry of the night before. You'd crawl into your hammock, if you had one, and spend the rest of the day sipping cool, life-giving water through a bendy straw under the shade of the lone tree in your back yard. If only you could. As it happens, you're expecting your in-laws for lunch.

This is a scenario that clearly calls for Tapas Menu Number 1:

Navajas a la plancha (grilled razor clams)
Langostinos a la plancha (grilled prawns)
Surtido de quesos y embutidos (selection of cheeses and cured meats)
Pan y aceitunas (bread and olives)

Assuming you have access to a good market, you're set. If you spend more than twenty minutes in the kitchen, something has gone horribly, horribly wrong.

To assemble this mini-feast, you should start by soaking the razor clams (you'll want at least 3 or 4 of these per person)...they're sandy and need to sit in warm water for about 10 minutes before you put them on the grill. You can also give the prawns (about 3/4 kilo or more, depending on how hungry you expect your in-laws to be) a rinse and shake them off in a colander.

For best results, you should get everything ready and on the table before you cook the seafood so that you can bring out the steaming platters of shrimp and clams as the crowning pièce de résistance. You should put out the olives and sliced bread along with a good extra virgin olive oil and salt. The cheese can go out sliced or whole, in the latter case with its own knife.

There's an enormous selection of Spanish cheese. One of the most popular varieties is manchego (pictured), a hard sheep's milk cheese from central Spain, which comes in fresco, semi-curado, curado y viejo varieties, a scale from youngest (softest and mildest) to oldest (hardest and sharpest). Another favourite is idiazabal, a yellow sheep's milk cheese from the Basque country. Other delicious goat, cow and sheep's milk cheeses abound in Spain and each region usually has a specialty or two. You should ask at your cheese shop about the different varieties and don't feel the need to limit yourself to just one.

The cured meats should go out sliced. Jamón iberico (pictured) or the much less expensive jamón serrano should be sliced paper thin at the shop. Embutidos (sausages) such as chorizo, fuet, longaniza or morcón (pictured) can be hand sliced at home. Chorizo and morcón (a larger, more coarsely cut version of chorizo) are flavoured with paprika and may be purchased in mild to spicy versions. They provide a nice counterpoint to the slightly sweet jamón iberico. Fuet and longaniza are also good choices--they have a subtle, slightly peppery flavour.

Now that the cured meats and cheeses have been taken care of, you can turn your mind to the seafood. Remove the clams from the warm water in which they've been soaking and give them another rinse under cold water. Set aside to wait with the shrimp.

Heat about a tablespoon or two of olive oil in a large frying pan, preferably one with a lid. Once the oil is hot, add a few slivers of garlic for flavour, stir for a moment and add the prawns. Sautee on medium high heat for a 3-4 minutes until the prawns have just turned a bright pink on all sides and not a second longer. (For more about cooking prawns, see The Tapas Episode.) Remove to a warm plate, clean out any obvious shell residue with a paper towel, add a little more oil to the pan and the razor clams. Cover with the lid. The clams only need about two to three minutes on the grill at medium-high heat, but you should turn them once (with tongs is easiest). Be careful of the sputtering oil and water combination. I might also have garnished the razor clams pictured above with a teaspoon of finely chopped thyme and about the same quantity of chopped, sauteed garlic, but this is absolutely not necessary--if you want to, though, you can throw these ingredients into the frying pan for a few seconds before you put in the razor clams. The clams should be completely open when you serve them. Feel free to serve with a little lemon on the side, but, again, absolutely not necessary when you have good, fresh seafood.

Bring the mouthwatering plates of seafood out with the appropriate pomp and ceremony and pour some cava (Catalan sparkling wine) all around. Your work is done.

Pigs for Obama

It's a little hard to wrap your mind around pigs on the glorious morning of the Obama victory. Believe me, I know. But, if any pig can take your mind off history-making, righteousness and the single largest ray of hope on the world political stage, it's the wooly, totally improbable Hungarian mangalica. I like to think the mangalica would have come out for Obama in droves were they human and registered voters in key swing states.

In any case, here's a link to my story about them (voting history not addressed) and the Spanish production company that helped save the breed: Mangalica: The Next Big Pig.

In case you're wondering, I do still have a piece of sausage left from the mangalica samples that Jamones Segovia sent me, the ham samples having disappeared a long time ago. The pork is delicious, even if the picture of the wooly critter on the packaging creeps me out a little every time.

More Ham

Well, I'm not going to make further jus-tifications for my delin-quency. Nor will I try to appease you by posting original material. But I do feel sufficiently guilty to at least post a version of the story I wrote for the Globe & Mail about jamon iberico. It ran with a different set of photos on April 2. (The photos I've posted here are just for you.) By the way, the ham passed Canadian inspection and arrived in stores on around April 10th.

Hog Heaven

LA ALBERCA, Spain — The village of La Alberca, in the low mountains of the Sierra de Francia in western Spain, resembles many towns in the region: Locals still smoke pipes in the main square and donkeys tread the cobblestone streets carrying farmers and their products.

But La Ablerca stands out for the stone statue of a pig in front of its church – a sign of the region's veneration of noble Iberian swine.

The area around La Alberca is one of the few in Spain where black-hoofed Iberian pigs, descendants of the wild boars that once roamed the peninsula, are raised free-range in oak forests, where they feed on acorns. The cured ham produced from these pigs ( jamon iberico) ranks with white truffles and beluga caviar as one of the food world's coveted wonders.

At an expected $300 a kilogram or more (about $1,500 a leg), the highest (bellota) grade of this ham will have a commensurately wondrous price tag when it arrives in Canadian food shops and restaurants for the first time, probably this week, following one Canadian's five-year quest to bring it here.

“This product is really special,” says Michael Tkaczuk, president and chief executive officer of Toronto's Serrano Imports, the force behind the ham's arrival in Canada.

He's not the only fan.”It's absolutely fantastic,” says chef Massimo Capra of Toronto's Mistura restaurant, which will be among the first to get the ham. “Canadians should be really excited to be getting it. Something like that is really something to rejoice about. We're not used to making this type of ham here. We're not used to getting it here.”

Chef Martin Kouprie of Toronto's Pangaea, which will be involved in the official launch of the ham on April 10, echoes the sentiment. While he says he typically prefers to work with local producers, this ham simply can't be produced locally.

Last summer, Pangaea served fresh Iberian pork it obtained as a sample at $50 a plate (single chops were served over potato rosti and organic vegetables). The dish was so popular that the restaurant ran out of the meat in two days. “People said it was better than they ever imagined and they actually saw the value in it,” Mr. Kouprie said.

When the Iberian ham is sliced, ideally by hand and paper thin, it is a deep maroon colour, shot with creamy fat. Placed in the mouth, it barely needs chewing; the smooth, nutty flavour explodes and the meat nearly melts apart.

The flavour is so exquisite that Pangaea intends to serve it unadorned, with only roasted red pepper and artichokes as accompaniment.

The story that comes with the ham gives the experience another dimension. Iberian pigs are a singular race. Their black hooves, slim legs and shiny red-black coats are often-cited distinguishing features.

But it is a genetic deformity that makes the meat so coveted: The pigs' fat penetrates muscle mass so well that the result is a thoroughly marbled, richly flavoured and tender meat. The fat is said to approximate olive oil in the high levels of oleic acids it contains, and has properties that lower bad (LDL) cholesterol and increase good (HDL) cholesterol.

To produce the highest quality Iberian ham (called jamon iberico de bellota), Iberian pigs are released in the last months of their lives into oak forests indigenous to the low mountain ranges of southern and central Spain.

Between November and late March, the pigs approximately double their weight by feeding on fresh mountain grasses and acorns that fall to the ground, which infuses the meat with its prized nutty flavour.

Traditional producers approach the slaughter of these pampered animals with great reverence, referring to it as “the sacrifice.” In a ritual that mimics an ancient religious rite, the pigs are not fed for 24 hours to remove impurities from their systems before being killed by the puncturing of the jugular vein. They are usually rendered unconscious with CO2 or stunned electrically before slaughter in order to reduce their stress and thereby preserve the quality of the meat.

In accordance with centuries-old tradition, legs of ham are cured in sea salt and dried at stringently controlled temperatures and humidity levels. The entire process can last for 24 months or more.

Even in Spain, where ham is a way of life, Iberian ham is prized.

When Mr. Tkaczuk first contemplated importing the ham to Canada in 2003, there were restrictions on the import of pork slaughtered in Spain. But by June 2005, concerns over various swine diseases in Spain were dispelled, said Elham Guirguis of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, and “fresh meat and processed meat products derived from swine originating in Spain [were] eligible for import into Canada, as long as they [were] slaughtered in an approved plant.”

Once Canada opened its doors, the challenge was getting the first exporter interested and approved. Because the supply of Iberian ham is relatively inelastic, the demand in Spain and Europe is already high, and the cost of complying with North American standards is significant, this was no easy task.

Mr. Tkaczuk approached Embutidos Fermin, a small family-owned producer in La Alberca that is currently the only exporter to the United States.

“Fermin wasn't initially thinking of Canada,” said Raul Martin, who is responsible for Fermin's North American export business. “Michael approached us.”

Mr. Tkaczuk had to woo. “Fermin seemed a little nervous at first. We used the contacts we had in the Spanish government and others to help convince Fermin to work with us,” he said.

Ultimately, it worked, and Fermin applied for Canadian approval, a process that has involved the inevitable delays and expenses occasioned by two countries' bureaucracies.

The first shipment of Fermin's jamon iberico is now on the ground in Canada for CFIA inspection. It is hoped that the ham will be available for sale this week in Vancouver, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal.

In a rare jump on their American neighbours, Canadians will be able to purchase the highest grade of the ham (bellota, or 100-per-cent acorn fed) before the same product gets to the United States, expected in July. A lower grade arrived in the United States in December, 2007, and, at $1,000 (U.S.) a leg, the first hams sold out in the blink of an eye.

Based on buzz alone, the Canadian experience is likely to be no different.

Jamón Iberíco

So this is the story. Over the past few weeks, I've been tracking and writing about this crazy ham (jamón iberíco) for a Canadian newspaper.

As my friend Dave says, jamón iberíco is the Dom Perignon of ham. It's a delicious ham, no question. Best in the world? I'd say so. It's certainly priced that way.

It arrived in the States in December and is coming to Canada for the first time this month--likely in stores this week. It will retail for about $300/kg or more for the bellota (highest grade, acorn fed ham); and about $180/kg for a lower grade of the ham (recebo, which is partially acorn and partially cereal fed). (The bellota will not reach the States until July--it can be pre-ordered on-line at www.latienda.com, a supplier of Spanish foods in America.)

In Toronto, you can buy the ham at Pusateri's, Cumbrae's or Longo's or sample it at restaurants Pangaea, Cava or Mistura. Domus in Ottawa will also have it as will a few other locations across Canada. It's well worth the price if properly stored and cut--particularly as you only need a few paper thin slices, say $10-15 worth, to get a good taste.

This is just a bit of pictorial flavour. The photo is of the ham in a drying room in the Sanchez Romero Carvajal (5J) factory in Jabugo, Spain, which I toured in February with Roger Davies of A Question of Taste (www.aqot.com), a fantastic gourmet tour company located in Seville and can arrange jamón and other food tours as well tapas tastings and Spanish cooking classes. 5J is one of the best known brands in Spain, but not the one coming to Canada...at least for now.

More on the ham, Jabugo, and the tour as well as the Spanish supplier to Canada, Embutidos Fermin, and my trip with the Canadian importer (Mike Tkaczuk of Serrano Imports) to visit Fermin's farm and factory later.