A Meating of Minds

Sally and I could have gone to Eataly for our prosciutto. But sometimes the best way to get a good artisanal ham is to make it yourself. With Italian friends.  In New Jersey, USA.  Here are six of them.

While overwintering in New York, Sally and I were invited by her master printer Gerard Franciosa and his father Antonio to join their family in the annual sausage and ham preparation.  It has to be done when the temperature is cold.  In deep winter.  In a cellar.  In suburban New Jersey.

The ham has to be butchered into a classic "chicken leg" shape.  All the scraps are turned into sausage using Antonio's proprietary mix of 11 (more or less) herbs and spices.  These are hung to cure and the hams are salted and left in his special basement cantina. In underground New Jersey.

The wine in those glasses is Antonio's own.  Made of Thompson seedless grapes.  In his cellar. In New Jersey. It was, as they say in the home country, squisito!

Saluti!