By David Rosengarten
Some friends and I were joking this week: in the wake of one of 2009′s most important trends, still gathering force, we have become… porkatarians!
Everywhere you turn these days, in hip urban centers, restaurateurs and merchants are expressing themselves… in pork! Particularly cured pork.
It’s probably the case that Mario Batali jump-started the trend. Ten years ago or so he started touting, in addition to the usual Italian salumi offerings, a product he cautiously called “white prosciutto”–which is actually cured pork fat, more accurately known as “lardo.” The “white prosciutto” thing… like telling a child that cow’s tongue is actually, er, beef… has gone away. All trendy Mediterranean restaurants now openly offer lardo, and lardo opened the floodgates. “Cripes… if we’re eating cured pork fat… we can eat anything!”
And we do. Stores and restaurants everywhere have bulked up on their salumi offerings, with both imported and domestic products. Spain played its own role in this unfolding drama, with the American discovery that Spanish ham is among the world’s greatest. Even French-style pork specialties– charcuterie –are having their day in the sun, with major French chefs opening pork-oriented establishments.
The only problem concerns the various “health” agencies, who think some of these products are “too much in the sun.” The New York City Department of Health, for example, has put a huge damper on the “house-made” side of this boomlet by forcing stores and restaurants who wish to cure their own pork to keep these products below 41 degrees. Everyone in the biz knows that the flavors of salumi and jamon don’t bloom unless they can age at 60 degrees, as they’ve done forever in Europe.
Oh well. Maybe the next wave will follow the relaxation of the squeaky-clean bureaucrats. For now… the domestic and imported pork products at top stores and restaurants is, following the demand, better than ever.
