Jamón

Before I came to Spain, I thought Spanish cuisine could be more or less summed up in three words: paella, gazpacho, sangria. Turns out that only tourists drink sangria (the locals drink tinto de verano, which is a mixture of red wine and lemon or club soda) and gazpacho, while popular, is only eaten in the summer. Paella is the only one of the trifecta that's as ubiquitous as I thought it would be –- but if someone asked me now, it still wouldn't be the number one most Spanish food item out there.  That prize would have to go to something I hadn't even thought about before I came here: the Spanish jamón.

Ham is practically a religion here. The sight of greased-up pig legs, hooves and all, dangling from restaurant and shop ceilings is as ordinary as sunshine. Their slightly musty smell is familiar to anyone who's spent time in Spanish pubs, and if you've been in Spain you've eaten it in some form or other, whether you are a vegetarian or not (they slip it into everything)(sorry if that just ruined your day).

In Andalucía, there's a saying that a house isn't a home without a ham. So, for Christmas, our friend José gave us a whole ham leg because he is awesome. It looks like this:

This is what The Mister looked like when I asked him how we were going to cut the jamón. We were so clueless that we had to look up YouTube videos to figure out how to slice the dang thing. As a point of interest, there are literally professional ham cutters in Spain. I even met a professor of ham cutting one time. A professor of ham cutting. Only in Spain.

As you can see, it doesn't resemble American-style ham in the slightest. It's not even cooked, it's just cured somehow. Lunch-meat ham is called jamón York here, although I'm not sure what exactly the York references.

Don't you want a slice?

(If you're a normal American, the usual first response is a squeamish but emphatic NO. But you get used to it. It's good.)