In Which Herb Eckhouse of La Quercia Talks Me Off a Ledge |
Herb & Kathy of La Quercia
Written by Mark Scarbrough
The day I spoke to Herb Eckhouse at La Quercia, I was in a bit of a pickle. Bruce and I had been trying to dry-cure a pig leg at home for our new book, Ham: An Obsession with the Hindquarter.
Trying but not succeeding. Let’s just say our first failure involved maggots, not a very promising start for professional food writers. I’ll leave the exact details to the book, one of its many stories about our current obsession (along with ninety or so recipes).
I needed to talk to a curing professional. So I tracked Herb down through spies. Or in truth, a friend who went to the Fancy Food Show specifically on a mission to get me some good ham contacts.
By the time I spoke to Herb, Bruce and I were well into our second failure, this one involving a ham hanging in a wine cellar in our basement, the meat dripping a snotty sludge, our collie on a minute-by-minute meat patrol outside the basement door. I was at an impasse.
And not prepared for the interview. That is, for the level of artisanal seriousness Herb brings to his craft. He tried to help me through the process but at the same time, he kept asking why in the world anyone would cure their own prosciutto crudo.
I said something about “real food at home.”
I could almost hear his eyes roll up in his head. “I still don’t understand why someone should try something so difficult at home?”
La Quercia Prosciutto
Why indeed? Especially when the cured, salty marvels from La Quercia are so silky, so indulgent, so wonderful—the best of Old World craft in the New World.
Eventually, Bruce used La Quercia prosciutto crudo for some of the book’s recipe-testing: the comfort-food casserole of baked orechiette with sage, roasted garlic, cauliflower, and prosciutto crudo; the shirred eggs in prosciutto crudo cups; and even the prosciutto-wrapped meatloaf with a vinegary tomato sauce.
Purists might insist on only eating La Quercia prosciutto crudo in its natural state. Maybe they’re right. I certainly loved every morsel I peeled off the butcher paper. But those gorgeous strips of cured ham tasted fine in the recipes, too. There, we had no problems whatsoever.
To learn more about the marvelously entertaining and informative new book from by Mark Scarbrough and Bruce Weinstein, go to: Ham: An Obsession with the Hindquarter
To visit Mark and Bruce's very popular website where you can enter The Ham Contest, go to: Real Food Has Curves
To learn more about La Quercia's critically acclaimed, artisan cured meats, click on any of the following:
Rossa Heirloom Prosciutto, 100% Berkshire Pork
Green Label Organic Prosciutto
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