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PATA NEGRA
how to make spaghetti with burro de salvia (sage
butter) from herbs grown in the garden.
EARLY THE NEXT MORNING we’re zipping across the
chalky countryside to a jaunty soundtrack of
Ex tre maduran jotas (folk music). I’m struck by
the emptiness of our surroundings. This region is
bigger than Holland and has a population of more
than a million, but all we see are small whitewashed
villages, grandiose haciendas accented
in yellow ocher, and the endless dehesa. Pais de
Quercus’s HQ is in Badajoz, a frontier town just
4km from Portugal, but we are headed north to Alburquerque
to meet Manuel Maldonado, Spain’s
unofficial king of ham and sausages, and the man
responsible for turning Tristancho’s pigs into
jamón. “He’s quite simply the best,” Tristancho
says as we pull up outside the Maldonado curing
factory.
The building is unremarkable from the outside:
squat, square and white with a small store in the
entrance. Slip behind the blue plastic curtains that
separate re tail from production, however, and you
enter a ca thedral of ham. Inside the curing rooms
and cellars, tawny hams hang seven stories high,
clustered together in small sections – or chapels,
if you will – assigned to different producers and
clearly marked by name. We take in Tristancho’s
Finca Cantillana hams before strolling the aisles,
a forest of legs navigated by green, concrete paths.
“How many are there?” I ask. Maldo nado shrugs.
“Thousands, though without checking the inventory
I have no exact figure.”
The pig’s journey from farm to plate is not a
quick one. First the legs (jamóns) and shoulders
(paletas) are placed in wooden boxes filled with
sea salt where they will stay for roughly one day
per kilo. After salting they are thoroughly washed
and dried, and then spend 90 days in a cooler to
concentrate the flavors. When Maldonado opens
the door to the walk-in refrigerator the smell hits
you like a wall: woody, herby, smoky, buttery and
sweet. Not meaty at all.
“The ecosystem that creates this pig is really
a miracle of nature,” says Maldonado, who only
works with purebred Ibérico pigs. “Dehesa pigs
are the only species of pig other than wild boar
that can survive in the wild. It stores fat from
the acorns during the montanera to live off in the
summer, and it works like magic. From October
onward it eats close to 10kg of acorns a day and
gains a kilo a day. It’s at its fattest at the coldest
time of year [January/February], which is when
we have the matanza [sacrifice], allowing us to salt
it at peak condition.”
Even the curing process reflects the seasons of
the dehesa. Upstairs in the curing rooms the windows
are shut during the day and opened at night
At home on the ranch:
Tristancho and mom Doña
Rita in the kitchen at Las
Navas; charcuterie from
last year’s matanza (above) �
90 DECEMBER 2012/JANUARY 2013 SCANORAMA