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Ms Purvis bought a pig's leg from a local grower, had a ham house cure it over several months, then she cooked and served it. She describes the rapidly vanishing traditions of the mountain ham house and its curing process.
QUOTE
Hundreds of hams hang from wooden beams, each wrapped in brown paper and a loosely woven, white stocking.
To get there, you climb narrow wooden stairs as steep as a ship's ladder. Halfway up, you start to smell an aroma of meat, salt and wood that has been accumulating for more than 80 years.
When you reach the top, you have to move carefully. A ham starts out as 25 pounds of bone, fat and meat. It's a hard thing to bump with your head. From spring until fall, when the room is filled with the latest batch of curing hams, moving around is like trying to cross an attic strung with oversized baseball bats.
To get there, you climb narrow wooden stairs as steep as a ship's ladder. Halfway up, you start to smell an aroma of meat, salt and wood that has been accumulating for more than 80 years.
When you reach the top, you have to move carefully. A ham starts out as 25 pounds of bone, fat and meat. It's a hard thing to bump with your head. From spring until fall, when the room is filled with the latest batch of curing hams, moving around is like trying to cross an attic strung with oversized baseball bats.
Ham, part 1
Ham, part 2
QUOTE
But Jordan knows there's a different world out there, a world that is coming back around to slowly made foods crafted from special ingredients. In New York, ham aficionados pay up to $125 a pound for Spain's Iberico ham and as much as $12 a pound for prosciutto di Parma from Italy – a long way from the $2.59 a pound Jordan gets for his ham.
He can't ship his hams to New York. His ham house is state inspected, so he can't sell across state lines. To get federally inspected, he's afraid he would have to change his operation, cover the old concrete walls and take out the wooden beams. That, he fears, might change his ham.
But this year, Jordan agreed to work with us on a project. In January, I brought the leg of an old-breed pig raised on Grateful Growers Farm in Denver, 35 miles north of Charlotte, to A.B. Vannoy. It was coated with Jordan's curing mix and left with the other hams while the salt and sugar worked their way into the meat.
Fifty-seven days later, fighting to see the road through thick fog, I returned to the ham house.
Once the hams are hanging, Nancy Jordan runs the business. She spends a lot of her time in the old ham house, where it's cold in winter and cool even in summer. She fills the ham orders, weighing, inspecting and wrapping the hams and shipping them to the customers.
When customers call, with praise or complaints, they talk to Nancy. She often looks worried, fretting about inspectors, about sales, about customers. What she really worries about is whether their business will survive.
He can't ship his hams to New York. His ham house is state inspected, so he can't sell across state lines. To get federally inspected, he's afraid he would have to change his operation, cover the old concrete walls and take out the wooden beams. That, he fears, might change his ham.
But this year, Jordan agreed to work with us on a project. In January, I brought the leg of an old-breed pig raised on Grateful Growers Farm in Denver, 35 miles north of Charlotte, to A.B. Vannoy. It was coated with Jordan's curing mix and left with the other hams while the salt and sugar worked their way into the meat.
Fifty-seven days later, fighting to see the road through thick fog, I returned to the ham house.
Once the hams are hanging, Nancy Jordan runs the business. She spends a lot of her time in the old ham house, where it's cold in winter and cool even in summer. She fills the ham orders, weighing, inspecting and wrapping the hams and shipping them to the customers.
When customers call, with praise or complaints, they talk to Nancy. She often looks worried, fretting about inspectors, about sales, about customers. What she really worries about is whether their business will survive.
