Spanish Ham

I love ham. Not just any ham, salty ham, what I call country ham, not city ham. I don't eat a lot of meat. I don't like chicken or turkey, ground beef is not my favorite, but pork, that's where it's at. While Chris and I were in Australia hanging out with the Spanairds, we started to learn about Spanish ham. Apparently you can buy a whole leg of ham, and what you do with that ham is sit it on your kitchen counter til it's gone, which is about a month. It all seemed so strange, but delicious. At ESS we have a few Spanairds there on grants from the Basque Country. One girl, Maddi, is my office mate. At an after work a few weeks back Chris and I were talking to the group from Spain. Of course we had to ask about the ham, and it's all true. We have even seen a Groupon where you can buy a leg of ham. So one day I received an email from the reception desk saying I had a certified package, and needed to be around the next day to sign for it. Here's what I got,

Four packs of honest to goodness Spanish ham straight from Spain! Maddi had called her sister and asked her to send me ham. She said she felt like she had to because it sounded like I loved it so much that I needed some! Needless to say I was super excited! Asier, Inego, and Maddi coached me before I left that day on the Spanish way to eat the ham. It was a Friday, so the weekend was looking good.

We planned 2 meals for the ham, breakfast and dinner. When we got up Saturday, we couldn't wait to try out our ham. We had bought cheese crusted bread rolls to make breakfast sandwiches. Chris poached eggs and we piled on the ham.

 

It was soooo delicious! The ham would just melt in your mouth. It was all we could do not to eat the whole package right then. For dinner we had planned to try out the Spanish way. They had said, never refrigerate the ham, once you open it, you have to finish it. The Spanish way required toasted bread, tomatoes, and olive oil (we also got some Spanish cheese and wine to round out the meal). We had a baguette that we sliced and toasted.

 

We had been instructed to rub the tomato on the bread, not cut it, just rub it on there.

Next came olive oil and ham.

 

 

It was amazing! We had more bread than we had ham, and it would have been a shame to let the bread go to waste, so we opened another pack. We were careful to only eat enough for the bread, and we saved the rest for omlettes the next morning. It was such a good food weekend. I am definitely putting Spain on my list of places to visit. As much as Chris and I love food, how could we not go there? If only I can get Nicole here so she can be our Spanish speaker!

 

Posted with Blogsy