If It Bleeds, We Can Make Sausage Out Of It

A friend of mine in high school, Mike Bell, used to work at a butcher in town. He often joked about how you can put anything in to sausage and no one would know. Later in life, I did some charcuterie of my own and while doing some research, learned how true this was. When making hot dogs, for example, some manufacturers use bits of bone and whatnot treated with chemicals to make them soft enough to grind right into the mix. Mmm.

When I walk into a store like the one in the pictures here -- and there are places with similarities to this in the States -- I think about how far some things have fallen from where they started. Look at this meat! I am so tempted, now that I can get it home, to get me one of them cured pig legs turned prosciutto crudo on its special little (ok, not that little) pig leg holder (see pic below) so I can just carve off a bit whenever I am inclined (which would be often).

This is where we bought most of the meat in my previous post. It is a shop right on the Campo de' Fiori.

But, sorry Italy, the best ham I ever had was when we did our tour of Spain. The first stop was Madrid and the first place we stopped in was a little bar that had plates of sliced ham. We payed an outrageous amount for a plate of paper thin slices of ham but, oh man, was it tasty. This was the legendary jamón ibérico de bellota, similar to prosciutto but in their final days the pigs can only eat acorns, imparting a complex nutty taste on the final ham.

I'm drooling.