My wife’s eyes narrowed. “If I hear another word about cured ham,” she
muttered, “I’ll attack you with a chisel.” I paused. She’s a slight woman,
but vicious. Clearly, I was turning into a ham bore. It was something I’d
have to watch. “Right,” I said. “Got you. But the other thing about Bayonne
ham is...”
She rose abruptly from the table and headed for the tool shed. Sometimes it’s
hard being an enthusiast.
You see, I’d just returned from a ham trip to the French Basque country, down
where the Pyrenees decline to the ocean. There were three reasons for the
journey. First, ham is my favourite food. It’s so simple and adaptable. You
can eat it straight, fry it with eggs, wrap it round fish or, as a solicitor
friend of mine does, stick it in sandwiches with lemon curd and Marmite.
Second, Bayonne ham, the most famous in France, is my favourite — “soft,
smooth and tender”, as the Basques say. It easily stands comparison with
Parma, Serrano and other Latin pig haunches better known in Britain. And,
third, it’s not only the taste, it’s the provenance. Bayonne ham speaks of
the Basque country as do red berets, poetry competitions and a certain
ambivalence towards bombers. Eat it while you’re there and you feel you’re
doing the right thing. It fits the cultural frame.
Of course, Basques can talk so interminably about their produce that you long
for them to be hit by a train, but there’s no doubt that it’s rewarding to
eat food with an identity in the place with which it is identified —
especially if the food is ham and you’re amid the soft-sided mountains of
the Pays Basque. Makes for a good trip, too. In short, “Hip, hip hourrah
pour le jambon de Bayonne,” as the ham song has it.
I first heard this anthem at the Maison de Jambon, in the village of Arzacq,
north of Pau. The question is, of course, why Bayonne ham has its HQ here
and not, as you might expect, in Bayonne. Simple. Bayonne is a port, the
place from which ham was traded and exported. So the name stuck. Arzacq, by
contrast, produces the stuff.
With that cleared up, we may move into the Maison, which is roughly 23 times
more interesting than you’d expect a ham exhibition to be: modern,
interactive and available in English. Its coverage of man’s relations with
the pig through the ages is captivating. In fact, fiction and legend, the
relation has been, we are told, “a surprising mix of tenderness and
repulsion”. Sometimes the pig is simply a sweet pink porker, while at other
times it becomes “a representative of all men’s vices: lust, greed and
licentiousness”.
It really is quite a burden for a beast to bear, especially when he also has
musical talent. Witness the vintage Barnum & Bailey poster on display,
which proudly announces “a troupe of remarkable TRAINED PIGS playing God
Save the Queen on the xylophone”. Sometimes I know I was born too late.
SO TO the ham itself. Cured ham was our way of getting meat through the winter
before we could bung it in the fridge. Out of necessity came great taste,
though it’s a complex business. I’m aware that you, too, might have access
to a chisel, so I’ll skip the details, but it takes between nine months and
a year to obtain that hard but tender mandolin-shaped item whose musty,
meaty aroma fills the better sort of continental charcuterie shop. Get any
stage wrong and the thing goes off.
The particular wonderfulness of Bayonne ham is due to a perfect curing climate
— dry air from the mountains, humidity from the Atlantic. Or the pigs’
maize-based diet. Or the special salt of the Adour River basin. Or all
three. Basques throw all these reasons into the mix, trusting they’ll stick
and justify their geographically limited trademark.
I headed southwest to Barcus, a village liberally scattered across a valley
bottom. If Postman Pat were French, he’d be operating here, puttering round
hillsides covered in forest and farming. Fabien Léchardoy’s meat and
charcuterie shop is in the village centre. It’s festooned not only with
hams, but with saucisson, dried belly pork and tins of conserves, all
prepared on the premises. The sight and smell are capable of knocking a
vegan out for days.
Fabien is a worried-looking Basque in his mid-fifties. “We’re disappearing,”
he said. “Who are?” I asked. “Artisan pork butchers.” Crikey. I knew they’d
gone in Britain — but in France, too? That morning, a steady stream of
customers, both locals and holidaymakers, seemed cause for hope. Fabien
wasn’t much cheered. “I’m edging towards retirement and there’s nobody to
take over. Nobody wants to work 70 hours a week. And customers are drifting
towards the supermarkets.”
I bought some ham in a spirit of solidarity and headed west to Lecumberry on
mountain lanes. My, but this is glorious country. Villages are immaculate,
their white buildings trimmed with red or green woodwork. The promise of
hearth and home is palpable. Ladies in boots and housecoats bustle to
vegetable gardens. Old men lean on sticks or bars, talking Basque.
Younger ones practise pelota, whipping the ball about at eye-watering speeds
with a bat, a racket or bare hands. The sport has ethics as cricket once
had, and a long history of illegal betting. Entire farms have been staked
and lost.
HERE, THEN, is a land of strong, rooted character. As a combative minority
people, Basques are forever staking out their cultural terrain.
Their tenacity in the matter of Basque drama, music and dancing can give the
outsider light migraine. They love testing their strength in Force Basque
contests — the local equivalent of the Highland games — and share with
Spanish Basques a formidable taste for fighting bulls, notably in Pamplona,
just over the border.
“So how come,” I said over dinner that night (ham lightly fried, with
piperade, a mix of peppers, tomatoes, onions and scrambled egg), “you’re
letting Bayonne ham disappear into the supermarket maw?”
By way of response, my Basque friend Daniel took me next morning to the market
in St-Jean-Pied-de-Port, the ridiculously picturesque mini capital of inland
Basque country. Across the river, in the shadow of the town walls, ham was
being sold on more stalls than I could shake a wallet at. Ruddy-faced folk
down from the mountains milled about. This was a proper market, centre of
life.
No cause for despair there, then. Later, I went just out of town to the
village of Gamarthe, a bucolic spot dominated by La Ferme d’Elizaldia. Which
isn’t really a farm but a well-disguised meat-processing setup. The
pig-breeder Jean-Baptiste Loyatho, 46, has built it up from scratch.
It’s a suite of spotless chambers full of raw meat and busy people in
hairnets. Frankly, it’s not that appetising — until you get to the drying
room, where maturing hams hang by the hundred. By this stage, they’ve
somehow lost all relation with the pig and become independent entities.
Loyatho is scarcely an artisan. He produces 200 hams per week (as opposed to
Fabien’s 600 per year). On the other hand, he’s nowhere near the league of
the big, industrial producers, which churn out 13,000 per week for the
supermarket trade. He has, in fact, found a third way: he sells to markets
and to small shops that can no longer produce their own. Thus, a little cog
of Basque life keeps turning. Oh, and the ham is terrific — even eaten at
9.30am, with coffee.
Bucked by this visit, I went for a walk up a mountain before returning to
celebrate in St-Jean-PdP. Next day, I left for home, to tell my wife all
about it. You know the rest.
Travel brief
A good way to tour the Basque country is to fly into Pau and out of Biarritz.
Ryanair (www.ryanair.com) flies to both airports, and to Biarritz from
Dublin and Shannon. Alternatively, Rail Europe (0870 837 1371,
www.raileurope.co.uk) has return rail fares from Waterloo to Biarritz —
journey time about nine hours — from £165 return. Alamo (0870 400 4593,
www.alamo.co.uk) has four days’ car hire from £107.
Chez Chilo (00 33-5 59 28 90 79, www.hotel-chilo.com; doubles from £40), in
Barcus, is a stylish family-run spot with a superb restaurant. The best
hotel in St-Jean-Pied-de-Port is Les Pyrénées (05 59 37 01 01,
www.hotel-les-pyrenees.com; doubles from £72). Good eating, too.
