Prosciutto has been made on the Italian peninsula since the time of Caesar. A salami requires anywhere from 20 to 120 days to cure, making it popular with chefs who want to put their house-made stamp on a rustic appetizer. But the best prosciutto requires 8 to 24 months to transform the salt-covered hind leg of a pig into a $35-per-pound luxury, a rosy meat that, when thinly sliced, is a complex, faintly salty delicacy that dissolves into richness on the tongue. It is nothing short of a miracle.
Careful attention is paid not only to the breed and weight of the pig but also to the way the leg is boned and trimmed, the type and amount of salt applied and the aging, cleaning and sealing processes, all of which must be undertaken at just the right time, under favorable temperatures and humidity. It takes skill to ensure the meat doesn’t rot; texture and flavor require artistry. Today in Parma, Italy, there are schools and trade groups dedicated to the science of the ham.
Nine years ago, Herb Eckhouse, then a 50-year-old Des Moines seed-company executive who’d been based in Parma, got a glimmer of what he’d like to do with his early retirement. A ham-shaped light bulb went off, Eckhouse recalled.In 2001, the family, started La Quercia (“oak” in Italian), and considering Iowa have more pigs than people, and combined with corn and soybeans, the state’s biggest crops, and are the best feed for pigs, it sounded like an ideal start. Herb spent four years studying prosciutto-making. Their results have received critical acclaim.
If salami is the blog of cured meats, then prosciutto is the great novel. A salami requires anywhere from 20 to 120 days to cure, making it popular with chefs who want to put their house-made stamp on a rustic appetizer. But the best prosciutto requires 8 to 24 months to transform the salt-covered hind leg of a pig into a $35-per-pound luxury, a rosy meat that, when thinly sliced, is a complex, faintly salty delicacy that dissolves into richness on the tongue. It is nothing short of a miracle.
“It’s a leap of faith,” Paul Bertolli, the expert behind Fra’ Mani salumi, acknowledged with a laugh. Known for his artisanal cured meats, he has yet to make the leap to prosciutto. Space, time and, as he put it, “all that money hanging up in the air” are daunting barriers.
Prosciutto has been made on the Italian peninsula since the time of Caesar. Traditionally the legs are hung after the November slaughter and left to mature throughout the seasons. Careful attention is paid not only to the breed and weight of the pig but also to the way the leg is boned and trimmed, the type and amount of salt applied and the aging, cleaning and sealing processes, all of which must be undertaken at just the right time, under favorable temperatures and humidity. It takes skill to ensure the meat doesn’t rot; texture and flavor require artistry. Today in Parma, Italy, there are schools and trade groups dedicated to the science of the ham. Knowledge aside, you still have to wait an awfully long time before you can taste if what you’ve made is any good.
Nine years ago, Herb Eckhouse, then a 50-year-old Des Moines seed-company executive who’d been based in Parma, got a glimmer of what he’d like to do with his early retirement. He was eating prosciutto in Parma with a friend who said, “You know, if you make something this good, you’re going to make a lot of people happy.” A ham-shaped light bulb went off, Eckhouse recalled.
For years, he imagined making good food in Iowa. “It was clear that we had this incredible bounty around us, but we weren’t known for creating great stuff to eat,” he told me, stretching his rangy frame at his dining room table. (Clearly things have changed: his wife, Kathy, was serving us apple pie whose heartbreaking crust was made with lard rendered from acorn-fed organic Berkshire pigs, their latest project.) “At the beginning of the 20th century, Iowa fed people. And here we are in the 21st century, and we’re feeding machines. It’s just a priori wrong.” He continued: “People were saying, ‘Iowa’s dying, and there’s no value added here.’ At that point I was thinking, Gosh, I wonder if we can make prosciutto in Iowa.”
In 2001, La Quercia (“oak” in Italian) was born. Eckhouse, a Harvard social-studies major in the ’60s, spent four years studying prosciutto-making. The couple would move their Volvo wagon out of the garage to weigh and salt legs, then age them in their guest bedroom. The first official prosciutto was shipped from their state-of-the-art plant near Des Moines in September 2005. Early on, the food writer Jeffrey Steingarten declared it the best prosciutto — domestic or foreign — he had tasted.
The Eckhouses are determined to not make an Italian facsimile. They might be advised by a consultant in Parma, but they call their product prosciutto Americano. (Technically it is closest to a prosciutto addobbo: “It’s the culaccia plus the fiocco without the stinco,” Eckhouse clarified in his warm, intelligent manner, explaining that the smaller size requires less aging time.) Their pork is sourced and slaughtered within 200 miles of their plant, and their cutting and curing techniques have been developed through much trial and error.
“One of the things in the U.S. is we don’t have the thousands of years of tradition of making prosciutto — or of making anything,” Eckhouse said. “But we have a much broader perspective. I feel like for the guys in Parma, they’re somewhat limited in what they can do to make the product better.”
Without those restrictions, the cured meats sold by La Quercia can represent the Eckhouses’ sense of Midwestern terroir. “We have more pigs than people in Iowa,” said Kathy, who handles the company’s bookkeeping and some sales, helps salt the 730 hams that arrive weekly and draws upon her food-savvy upbringing in Berkeley, Calif., and Europe in her role as chief culinary officer. Herb pointed out that corn and soybeans, the state’s biggest crops, are the best feed for pigs, according to Parma scientists. La Quercia also reflects the couple’s political values: they require that the pigs be humanely raised and free of subtherapeutic antibiotics. “You see that the quality of the meat comes from the quality of life of the animal and the quality of the feed,” Herb said. One result is that perhaps only 2 percent of the pigs killed in Iowa are candidates for La Quercia: “We’re this little fringe.”
But they’re gaining an influential following. The silken-textured, nutty-sweet prosciutto is named on menus from A16 in San Francisco to Blackbird in Chicago, from Otto in Manhattan to Central Michel Richard in Washington, D.C. The La Quercia range, sold in Whole Foods, has expanded to include organic and heirloom prosciuttos, as well as lardo, pancetta, speck, coppa, guanciale and an annual Acorn Edition, in which subscribers pay $3,000 to receive all the parts of the prized acorn-fed organic Berkshire meat during the year, from fresh to cured. (Paul Bertolli raved about the Acorn Edition meat, saying, “I’ve never had anything that good in Italy.”) The plant recently expanded, too, to allow for longer aging.
Someday, Eckhouse would love to sell prosciutto in Italy: “Not because I think we’re better, but because we have ours, too.” Iowa, it seems, now has something to bring to the global table.
