It’s ham time.
Two of the culinary worlds most famous foods—but the American versions!
In France, brie comes in many sizes—from wheels that are a meter across to some that fit in the palm of your hand. The problem is getting brie from France to the US. We have laws that don’t allow cheeses into the country unless they’re a certain number of days old and they’re made with the right kind of milk (i.e. pasteurized). You can still get French brie here, but you won’t have many days to sell it or you’ll have to pay a lot in shipping to have it flown over quickly. Or you can make it yourself.
Prosciutto is the cured ham that always comes to mind when you envision a speciality food store or hip delicatessen (like Zingerman’s). You see the leg pinned tightly into a stand, ready to be hand sliced into ruby red pieces riddled with opaque white fat that melts on your tongue. The famous prosciutto! And you can only find it in Italy. Well that part’s not true. Curing hams has been happening all over the world for centuries if not millenia and we’ve been doing the same in the US for a long, long time…we just called it “country ham.” Now we call it prosciutto. That’s marketing for you.
In This Installment
Mini Brie from Ann Arbor
Broadbent Prosciutto
Mini Brie from Ann Arbor
Right from the start, this oozy, woozy, Brie-style cheese has been tasting impressively good—buttery, mushroomy, almost meaty in the finish.
Unlike the large wheels of Brie which caught on in Paris to feed lots of people by the wedge, each four-ounce round of this cheese fits in your palm. It is just big enough for eating at home or sharing with a few friends.
The main thing to know is that these new little cheeses taste terrific! Great with a good crusty loaf of bread. Nice with fresh apples or pears, and a good match with walnuts, hazelnuts, or almonds. Made from pasteurized cow’s milk.
Broadbent Prosciutto
This prosciutto is smoked and cured in the town of Kuttawa, down in the southwestern corner of the Bluegrass state. The ham is rubbed with salt and a little secret spice, then hung to cure at a steady temperature for about nine months. It’s not quick cured at higher temperatures nor relegated to a cool room to keep its weight, two typical cost saving measures. The resulting prosciutto is sweet and tender with an honest pork flavor.
It’s ready to enjoy—sliced thinly like Italian prosciutto or Spanish cured Jamón. Sure, they refer to it as “hillbilly prosciutto” but that’s just because it’s from Appalachia—it’s cured essentially the same way. Folks in Kentucky have always snacked on uncooked cured ham. Beth Drennan, who owned Broadbent for 25 years with her husband Ronny, told me, “When I was a child, my dad would keep it hanging in our garage. He would cut a few slices and put it back in the cloth and paper bag and hang it back in the garage until he was ready to slice off more.”
It’s served that way at David Chang’s Momofuku Ssam Bar in New York. You don’t have to do any slicing, though, just open and enjoy. One more suggestion: let the prosciutto (and the brie for that matter) hang out on the counter until it comes to room temperature. They taste the best that way.