"prosciutto" news and stories

Prosciutto from Big Boy the pig. Photo: Rebecca Winters.

"What happened to the rats on your property?" someone asks urban farmer Novella Carpenter.

"I have a theory that my pigs ate the rats," Carpenter says. Realizing that her audience has been munching on slices of said pig's hindquarters, she laughed. "So enjoy some delicious prosciutto!"

Farmers are reputed to have a tough streak. They step over piles of excrement, battle gargantuan hogs and, of course, have to earn a living. Carpenter, author of "Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer," seems no exception. She lives in the city, not the country, "so I can get Chinese food at 2 a.m."

The two 300-pound hogs she raised in what she calls the Oakland, Calif., "ghetto," also enjoyed Chinese takeout. She read about her adventures in urban farming on a Brooklyn, N.Y., rooftop adjacent to a 6,000-foot, 30-crop rooftop farm built by Goode Green and tended by farmers Annie Novak and Ben Flanner.

Dumpster diving, fish guts and the cost of rooftop farming, after the jump.

'Nancy Silverton's Sandwich Book'
Recipes by Nancy Silverton with Teri Gelber
Photographs by Amy Neusinger
Clarkson Potter -- 2000
Buy it at Amazon

Nancy Silverton, co-owner of Los Angeles restaurants Campanile and La Brea Bakery, is devoted to the sandwich. With visions of red-checked tablecloths, illicit bottles of wine and prosciutto-stuffed baguettes dancing in our heads, this is a philosophy we can get behind. Her book is a compilation of greatest hits as well as those imported from famous shops like New York City's 'ino, with special sections on open-faced sammies, tea sandwiches, and even stacked cakes and cookies.

Takeaway tips: To skim the book is to take a class in "What Goes With What 101." Prosciutto di parma drapes seductively atop a poached egg and emerald-green asparagus in one open-faced creation and baked ricotta serves as a bed for luxe roast roma tomatoes and just-caramelized onions in another. It's the sort of book you can flip through while poking through the fridge to see what's left, salivating all the while.

Quality of pictures: Beautiful. Fancy sandwiches are now de rigeur, but one could argue that this book helped take them to a new level.

We tested: French Baguette with Butter and Prosciutto
It's a funny thing to throw a party around a sandwich, but that's happened more than once with this epic behemoth. Cut open a baguette, wind prosciutto through it and smear with Silverton's special scallion oil and imported butter. Cut into pieces. Wrap in hands. Bite. Don't tell guests what is in the sandwich. Watch them flip out. This three-types-of-fat sandwich may not be healthy, but in small doses, it will make new best friends out of total strangers.

Worth the investment: It's picnic season. Absolutely.

Scientists like to play with their food, too, as evidenced by this hot new video of Theo Gray demonstrating his "flaming bacon lance of death." The author of "Mad Science" crafts his lance with tubes made of bacon that -- when hooked up to oxygen and set aflame -- can cut through steel.

"It turns out that ordinary American bacon does not have the structural integrity that's necessary for this application," he says. "So I'm using an engineering grade of bacon which is known as prosciutto."

Gray has you vegans covered too. His "Vegan Thermic Lance" -- made of cucumber and breadsticks -- is a great destroyer too.

What do you think -- delicious fun or waste of precious prosciutto?

[via Boing Boing]

Prosciutto, the salted and long-aged meat of the hind legs of a pig, has been made in Italy for thousands of years. Now, a couple in Iowa are turning out prosciutto to rival that of the finest pork artisans in Parma, writes The New York Times. Herb Eckhouse, a former Des Moines seed company executive, and his wife Kathy spent four years studying prosciutto-making, salting meat in their garage and aging it in a spare room. It's been on the market since 2005, and Vogue food writer Jeffrey Steingarten has declared it the best prosciutto he's ever tasted. And that, coming from the author of "The Man Who Ate Everything," is really saying something.

Now, prosciutto from La Quercia, as the company is called, is making a big splash with chefs coast to coast, and is sold at Whole Foods. The company now sells, in addition to prosciutto, other cured pork products like lardo, pancetta and speck.

Has anyone had La Quercia prosciutto? How does it compare to the Italian stuff?

Source

You heard it here first! As of June 1, the pig farmers of Italy are going on strike. That puts Parma ham, prosciutto, and Piacenza pork neck salami, as well as other Italian pork products, under threat.

The Italian farmers say their earnings have been cut in half, with falling pork prices and rising feed costs. They decided to strike when financial assistance talks with the government fell through earlier this month. Part of the strike calls for farmers to not recognize Protected Designation of Origin certificates, which then can't be sold under EU rules.

If you're a big fan of Italian pork products, you might want to think about stocking up. If the garbage strike in Naples is any indication, this could last for a while.

[Via ANSA]