Not just for melons! (Fiorucci Parma Ham)

Member Name: SueMagee

Product:	Fiorucci Parma Ham
Date:	22/10/05 (384 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A consistent, delicately-flavoured, air-dried ham.

Disadvantages: It isn't cheap.

One thing I miss about living in a village in the Yorkshire Dales is that there isn't an Italian Delicatessen nearby. I can't pop in for my olives, Parmesan cheese or Parma Ham. The local supermarket supplies reasonable olives and good Parmesan, but their Parma Hams have a slow turnover and I've frequently found them to be more fatty and salty than hammy.

I've resorted to buying something in a packet.

First of all, what is Parma Ham, or as it says on the packet "Prosciutto di Parma"? It's one of Italy's best hams and comes from the province of Parma in the north of the country. It's also the area that produces Parmesan cheese. One of the by-products of the cheese-making process is the whey from the milk and this is fed to the pigs along with chestnuts. The hams are seasoned, salted and air-dried but they're not smoked. The firm, dense flesh is a pinkish-brown with a rim of white fat.

The hams are cut very thinly – so thinly that you could read through them – and usually served raw. Don't let this put you off though, as it really is delicious. When I bought my ham from an Italian delicatessen they used to save me the rinds that they trimmed off and I used them to flavour soups. The main body of the ham is occasionally used in cooked dishes, but this is the exception rather than the rule, as cooking does nothing to help the delicate flavour.

For the past few years I've been buying Fiorucci Parma Ham. Fiorucci are a long-established company based in Italy who take a pride in ensuring that the ham I buy is from the villages around Parma and that all the processes involved in the production of the hams take place there.

This might seem a small point, but it means that you can be assured of a superior ham. A similar point arises if you're buying smoked salmon. "Smoked Scottish Salmon" can have been smoked anywhere and "Salmon smoked in Scotland" can have been caught anywhere. You have to look for an assurance that the salmon has been caught and smoked in Scotland. With Parma Ham you need to know that the pigs were reared in the province of Parma and that the air-drying took place there too. The animals will not have suffered the stress of travelling and nor will the meat have been frozen at any point. If either of these things has happened the ham will be of poorer quality.

For every 100gr of ham which is produced 129gr of pork will have been used. As the pork is air-dried it shrinks and it's this which makes it dense and allows it to be cut so thinly. The down-side of the process is that the ham is salted before it's dried and every 100gr of Parma ham contains 2.1gr of salt, so it's not for someone on a low sodium diet. On the face of it you would think that someone on a low-fat diet should avoid this too, as it's 9% fat, but 40gr of the ham is a reasonable serving and you can, if you wish, trim the fat from the edge of the ham.

I've found the Fiorucci ham to be very consistent. I buy a pack most weeks and the ham has the same delicate, slightly salty flavour of pork. The aroma is almost, but not quite, bacon. It's reasonably dry to handle and on the tongue, although not quite as dry as the loose ham that I've bought. When I've bought Parma Ham at the delicatessen I've quite regularly been disappointed when the ham has been too salty for my taste. This has never happened with the Fiorucci hams.

Serving Parma Ham with melon has become something of a cliché now, but it's still a good starter provided that the melon is perfectly ripe and not chilled. For me it doesn't do sufficient to bring out the flavour of the ham unless you add some black pepper to the melon. Please don't add ginger – it murders the flavour of the ham and the melon!

Try instead a summer salad of lettuce, cucumber, barely-cooked runner beans and strawberries. Tear Parma Ham and add to the salad at the rate of half a pack per person and then toss with a vinaigrette dressing. Take it out into the garden on a warm summer's day with some crusty bread and a glass of good white wine and you have a lunch from Heaven. In autumn I like to serve a starter of Parma Ham, figs, late peaches and strawberries. The slight saltiness of the Parma Ham complements the richness of the figs and the delicacy of the other fruit perfectly. In winter I serve the ham with warm caramelised onions and shavings of Parmesan cheese. It's almost inevitably our starter on Christmas Day.

You'll usually find the Fiorucci Hams with other packs of dried or cooked hams at the supermarket. It's in a pack with a clear plastic back with the label at the front providing the seal. This is necessary because the slices (usually five or six and all interleaved with plastic) are packed in a protective atmosphere. This is a gas similar to air, but the oxygen content has been reduced to slow deterioration of the contents. There is nothing to suggest that this gas is in any way harmful, but you should open the pack at least ten minutes before you plan to eat.

An 80gr pack, which is sufficient for two people, usually costs £2.99, although I have seen it on offer for £1.99 recently. The protective atmosphere packaging means that the use-by date is usually about a month ahead.

Five stars from me because it's not quite as good as a perfectly-dried ham at its best, but it's consistently the best packaged Parma Ham that I've bought.

Summary: A good quality, genuine Parma Ham at a reasonable price.