The name Parma is to dried ham (prosciutto crudo) what Hoover is to vacuum cleaners. People forget it applies to a particular ham from a designated region. Within Italy there are other regional hams, such as San Daniele from Friuli; Spain is famous for Iberico and Serrano hams, France for Bayonne ham; and in Britain, over the past few decades, producers have begun offering their own regional dried ham. “People think we have no history of dried ham in this country, but we do here in Cumberland, especially within the gypsy community,” says Peter Gott of Sillfield Farm, whose award-winning Cumbria Speck and wild-boar prosciutto have been winning plaudits around the world. And at Carmarthen Ham in Wales, Chris Rees jokes that the recipe for his air-dried ham is so old that the Romans stole it when they came to Britain.

ARE ALL DRIED HAMS MADE IN THE SAME WAY? Fundamentally, the process involves curing, then air-drying and maturing, but there are infinite nuances involving the breed of pig, the way it is raised, and so on. In Parma, they say the flavour of the ham is influenced by the whey the pigs eat (from the production of Parmesan) as well as the dry aromatic mountain breezes. In Spain, the famous Joselito ham, from the Pata Negra (black foot) pig, derives its intense sweet flavour from a diet of acorns, and slow maturation for two years in the cool, dry air of Guijuelo in Salamanca. In Britain, with its cooler, wetter climate, maturing and drying is necessarily a more controlled process, though geography still plays its part – at Richard Woodall’s in Waberthwaite, for example, vents draw sea air through the building as the hams mature.

WHY AREN’T MORE AIR-DRIED HAMS PRODUCED IN THIS COUNTRY? While other countries have nurtured and championed their artisan produce in the face of global culture, British food has gone down the route of mass production, more concerned with use-by dates than old-fashioned curing methods. So it has been a process of opening customers’ minds and jumping bureaucratic hurdles designed for generic “ready-to-eat meat”. The rewards of persistence, however, are gratifying. “We have done a lot of research with experts in Italy and Spain, and producers there are blown away by the quality of our breeds and the know-how we have in this country,” says Gott.

WHERE TO BUY: Sillfield Farm, £3.95 for 100g of Speck (01539 567609; www.sillfield.co.uk); Richard Woodall, £3.50 for 125g (01229 717237; www.richardwoodall.co.uk); Denhay Farm, £4.70 for 115g (01308 458963; www.denhay.co.uk); Carmarthen Ham, £4.20 for 100g (01267 237687; www.carmarthenham.co.uk).

Readers’ queries
Where can I get wild mushrooms – supermarkets only stretch to chestnut, oyster and shiitake?

Mushroom expert Brigitte Tee has been selling wild mushrooms for nearly 30 years, and will send your chosen mixture out to you (01590 673354; www.wildmushrooms.co.uk).

If you have a food query, e-mail food.detective@thetimes.co.uk

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