The Master Ham Carvers of Spain Part Two Mariani's Virtual Gourmet Sunday, April 25, 2021

 

* * * * * 

Mariani's Virtual Gourmet

 

 

Clemente Gómez, the Denominación de Origen Protegida (D. O. P.) Pedroches’s Cortador Oficial

Jose Ángel Muñoz (below), Maestro Cortador of Ibérico ham for producer Arturo Sánchez in Guijuelo, is from Granada. Like many Andalucian natives who identify with bullfighting, he compares being a ham cutter to being a torero, contending that his attitude is the key to getting the best out of each jamón and that “cutting hams is like facing a bull. You have to be extremely prepared. One of my qualities is in my wrist, I have temple in it.”  Temple is that essential quality in bullfighters who have mastered the art of controlling a bull by slowing it down and measuring a pass so that a bull seems ever so fluidly and exquisitely to flow by the body of the matador. 

 

Jose Ángel Muñoz (below), Maestro Cortador of Ibérico ham for producer Arturo Sánchez, with Arturo Sánchez at Madrid Fusión 2018.

 

      

     Muñoz believes his low-key professional ham cutting style is based on patience, perfection and dexterity—the wrist again. He also claims to “listen” to each ham, registering the way each responds as it is being carved, the level of oleic acid that may seep out from the meat, and the aroma of nuttiness, depending upon how well aged the ham is.  

 

     "When a Maestro Cortador ‘opens’ a jamón, he or she already knows what defects and virtues the ham might have. Each ham tells you about the curing process it has undergone. The texture of the fat-infiltrated eat can tell you a lot about the quality of la montanera that the pig has undergone and about the curing process,” Muñoz says. “I still remember a ham I carved a few years ago in Sevilla that was without a doubt the best ham I have ever cut. The fat infiltration in that ham made it seem like I was cutting butter.”

            

            Joselito, officially Cárnicas Joselito, is a 152-year-old Ibérico producer in Guijuelo that is generally considered to be the Petrossian of fine Ibérico hams and charcuteria.   Joselito jamones are literally allocated and each year’s allotment has to be partially paid for up-front, while the hams are still aging.Pre-Covid, Joselito billed an estimated €40,000,000 annually. 

       

        The public face behind Cárnicas Joselito is 55-year old José Gómez (right), a no-nonsense man of solid Ibérico stature who, although always dressed in a fine conservative dark business suit, is a rock star in the gourmet food business. Over the past decade Joselito has not sponsored many product-presentation stands at gourmet shows, instead setting up its own pavilions, where Gómez entertains the culinary world’s royalty like the jamón king that he is. French Champagne flows freely and waiters pass generous plates of his jamón and charcutería Ibérico de bellota—superb caña de lomo (cured pork loin), chorizo Ibérico, salchichón (cured pink salami-like sausage) and coppa (or cabecero, made from select meat from the head of the pig).

 

        Ernesto Soriano is the main cortador for Joselito. He is a motorcycle enthusiast with a shaved head, full beard and formidable tattoos on his arms. On his Facebook page, he posted a picture of himself that he labelled “súper chunga,” joking that he was a badass, but he is married with two young children he adores. When he is not on the circuit, his day job is cutting hams at Joselito’s Charcutería & Restaurante in Madrid. 

 

        In early February 2018, I went to Joselito’s Veláquez store-restaurant to see if I could at least photograph a cortador cutting jamón Joselito. I got lucky, because Ernesto Soriano was at Joselito’s with his compañero cortador, David Alonso Martínez.

 

       When I asked Soriano (left) how he became a professional cortador de jamón, he told me, “I have been carving Ibérico hams for thirty years, the last five of which I have been lucky enough and privileged to be the Cortador Oficial for Joselito. Like a majority of cortadores, I began as an apprentice in a charcutería in a supermarket in the Madrid Barrio of Mortalaz. I never took a ham cutting course, I just observed how others carved hams, and I learned and evolved, constantly seeking to perfect my technique.”

      Soriano also echoed a refrain I heard from the other cortadores, “To be a successful professional cortador de jamón, you must have respect for the product, a lot of respect.  I believe the jamones are a product that is above us as ham cutters. Cortadores are the final link in the chain before a ham reaches the customer; therefore we have the responsibility to treat the ham with the affection it deserves. A lot of work has been done in the fields where the pigs are raised and the process—the salting, curing and drying in the cellar—requires a special skill before it reaches us. If we do not handle and carve the hams properly, we are disrespecting many people who do a very hard job of getting us the best possible product.”

        Soriano gave me a lesson in the tools that each cortador uses in the craft of carving fine jamones. Each cortador has a carrying case, like a matador with his sword case. Like Juanma Aguilar’s tool case, they are usually embossed with his name and calling card information. 

        Soriano told me, “There are different knives, not just the classic long, thin-blade jamonero, or ham knife, that we use for much of the carving process. For opening a ham, I like to use a cuchillo de sierra, a serrated knife typically used to cut bread, to slice away the hard outer covering or rind of a ham. You have to be very careful to clean the blade, because the outer layer of the ham has bacteria we do not want on the slices of ham that we cut. We also use a small, very sharp and sharp-tipped boning knife called a puntilla that I use to marcar el hueso, or cut around the hip joint bone and the femur, so that each slice towards the bone comes away cleanly.” 

         Some ham cutters, including Ernesto Soriano, prefer a Japanese alveolated jamonero knife, sometimes referred to as a cuchillo de salmon, a cured-salmon cutting knife that has notched hollows spaced the length of the blade, which allows the formation of air pockets that keep the slices from sticking to the blade.

         The remaining tools include a set of steel pincers to grip each slice as it is being cut and a small, pointed device made of wire sometimes used to burrow down alongside bones. In many kits, a steel chain-mail oyster-opener glove is sometimes used to protect the non-cutting hand from wounds from a wayward knife. 

      Despite the importance of their artistry, as The Ministro de Labor y Empleo does not yet recognize cortador as a real job.  José Ángel Muñoz laments, “Unfortunately, the profession of ham cutter does not yet officially exist. But little by little we will get the government to acknowledge that cutting ham is a legal employment classification.” After a brief tour of the curing rooms at Cinco Jotas Sánchez Carvajal in Jabugo (Huelva, Andalucía), Chef Ryan McIlwraith and Executive Chef Joel Ehrlich, whom I was leading on a Spanish gastronomy research tour in preparation for their opening of Bellota in San Francisco, joined me and Cinco Jotas official Cortador Severiano “Seve” Sánchez (right) in a dining room the firm uses to entertain guests. Sánchez gave us a seminar on ham cutting and showed us the differences in the distinct areas of a ham.

 

         “If a jamón is really fine, the knife just glides through the meat and fat,” he said, “signifying that it comes from a pig that has had a good diet of acorns so the fat is well marbled into the meat. If the knife does not cut through the meat easily, that shows that the pig from which it came has not had a diet sufficiently high in acorns.”

        Sánchez demonstrated that there are four distinctly flavored parts to each ham,  beginning with “la maza, the widest section of the ham with the greatest area of cured rind. Next he showed us la contramaza, which some sources claim is the same as the la babilla section of the ham, but is actually higher up on the leg, nearer the hip bone. La babilla is the thinner side of the ham with a lesser outer layer of fat, then there is la punta, the bottom part of the ham and finally el jarrete, the thin part of the leg that ends in the hoof. 

         Sánchez opened the outer layers of la maza and discarded them, saying,  “This outer layer protects the ham as it is aging and is a part of the curing process. It is bitter and not good to eat, so we do not want it to come in contact with the fresh-cut parts of the ham. The ideal temperature range for conserving a jamón should be between 14°C and 18°C (54°F and 64°F). The ideal temperature for consumption should be between 20°C and 24°C (68°F and 75°F).

        He sliced a fine layer of fat from the upper part of the maza, wrapped it around his finger and rubbed it to show us how the fat melts,  then how the maza slices are marbled. Next, he showed us the contramaza, below the maza. Because the hams hang from the hoof during the curing and drying process, it is somewhat more cured than la maza, so the slices come out smaller.

In addition to the Maestros Cortadores, there are numerous other free-lancers like Juanma Aguilar (below), who has his own ham distribution business, Barrios, in Valencia. He showed us how he selects a ham and demonstrated how he tests the quality of the fat in a ham by inserting his index finger into it. “My finger is the temperature of my body,” he said. “Being a ham cutter has permitted me to know other European countries where many great people have taught me a lot. I would like to be dedicated just to cut hams like Florencio Sanchidrián, but, everyone has their own path. I have always had to run my ham and charcuterie business, so I do not always have the time to go away to ham cutting contests and food fairs, because the kilometers you have to travel and the expense can make an old man of you.”

 

 

Although being a cortador de jamón is a male-dominated profession, there are several women cortadoras de jamón, most notably up-and-comers Raquel Acosta and Silvia Andrada. Acosta is a have-cuchillo-will-travel ham artista, who freelances as Cortadora de Jamón Raquel Acosta Quintanilla and bills herself as a #haminfluencer,  willing to journey nationally and internationally to “influence” hams for interested clients. Andrada, who lives in Salamanca and won the Castilla y León ham cutting competition in 2017, works with Corte Fusión, a group of cortadores de jamón who offer their ham carving services. 

 

 

 

  

        A whole universe is distilled into a finished quality jamón Iberico and into a consummate ham cutter. All the tools and training, all the montanera, the acorns the pigs eat, the ham selection and curing process and the ham carver come together to provide to the uninitiated what seems to be the simple act of eating a slice of ham.  But, from a Maestro Cortador, a fine slice of jamón Iberico de bellota, though more easily encountered than a finely shaved white truffle perfuming a plate of pasta or a mound of Ossetra caviar on a mother of pearl spoon, is no less exquisite.

The Master Ham Carvers of Spain By Gerry Dawes, Mariani´s Virtual Gourmet - Part One 

Constructive comments are welcome and encouraged.

 

If you enjoy these blog posts, please consider a contribution to help me continue the work of gathering all this great information and these photographs for Gerry Dawes's Insider's Guide to Spanish Food, Wine, Culture and Travel. Contributions of $5 and up will be greatly appreciated. Contributions of $100 or more will be acknowledged on the blog. Please click on this secure link to Paypal to make your contribution.

 

Text and photographs copyright by Gerry Dawes©2021.  Using photographs without crediting Gerry Dawes©2021 on Facebook.  Publication without my written permission is not authorized.

* * * * *

  Shall deeds of Caesar or Napoleon ring
More true than Don Quixote's vapouring?
Hath winged Pegasus more nobly trod
Than Rocinante stumbling up to God?

 

Poem by Archer M. Huntington inscribed under the Don Quixote on his horse Rocinante bas-relief sculpture by his wife, Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington,

in the courtyard of the Hispanic Society of America’s incredible museum at 613 W. 155th Street, New York City.

 _________________________________________________________________________

 

In 2019, again ranked in the Top 50 Gastronomy Blogs and Websites for Gastronomists & Gastronomes in 2019 by Feedspot. (Last Updated Oct 23, 2019) 

"The Best Gastronomy blogs selected from thousands of Food blogs, Culture blogs and Food Science blogs in our index using search and social metrics. We’ve carefully selected these websites because they are actively working to educate, inspire, and empower their readers with frequent updates and high-quality information."  

36. Gerry Dawes's Spain: An Insider's Guide to Spanish Food, Wine, Culture and Travel

 
About Gerry Dawes

My good friend Gerry Dawes, the unbridled Spanish food and wine enthusiast cum expert whose writing, photography, and countless crisscrossings of the peninsula have done the most to introduce Americans—and especially American food professionals—to my country's culinary life." -- Chef-restaurateur-humanitarian José Andrés, Nobel Peace Prize Nominee and Oscar Presenter 2019

Gerry Dawes was the Producer and Program Host of Gerry Dawes & Friends, a weekly radio progam on Pawling Public Radio in Pawling, New York (streaming live and archived at www.pawlingpublicradio.org and at www.beatofthevalley.com.)

Dawes was awarded Spain's prestigious Premio Nacional de Gastronomía (National Gastronomy Award) in 2003. He writes and speaks frequently on Spanish wine and gastronomy and leads gastronomy, wine and cultural tours to Spain. He was a finalist for the 2001 James Beard Foundation's Journalism Award for Best Magazine Writing on Wine, won The Cava Institute's First Prize for Journalism for his article on cava in 2004, was awarded the CineGourLand “Cinéfilos y Gourmets” (Cinephiles & Gourmets) prize in 2009 in Getxo (Vizcaya) and received the 2009 Association of Food Journalists Second Prize for Best Food Feature in a Magazine for his Food Arts article, a retrospective piece about Catalan star chef, Ferran Adrià. 

In December, 2009, Dawes was awarded the Food Arts Silver Spoon Award in a profile written by José Andrés. 

". . .That we were the first to introduce American readers to Ferran Adrià in 1997 and have ever since continued to bring you a blow-by-blow narrative of Spain's riveting ferment is chiefly due to our Spanish correspondent, Gerry "Mr. Spain" Dawes, the messianic wine and food journalist raised in Southern Illinois and possessor of a self-accumulated doctorate in the Spanish table. Gerry once again brings us up to the very minute. . ." - - Michael & Ariane Batterberry, Editor-in-Chief/Publisher and Founding Editor/Publisher, Food Arts, October 2009. 

 

Pilot for a reality television series on wine, gastronomy, culture and travel in Spain.
 

Experience Spain With Gerry Dawes: Customized Culinary, Wine & Cultural Trips to Spain & Travel Consulting on Spain  

Gerry Dawes can be reached at gerrydawes@aol.com; Alternate e-mail (use only if your e-mail to AOL is rejected): gerrydawes@gmail.com