Wild Boar Prosciutto and Sardegna Tasting
Hello, and welcome to Kahunasfoodandwine.com, the galaxy’s most popular food and
wine show. We’re here on Taste Test Tuesday. And, normally on Taste Test Tuesday, I
have the house to myself, not the case today. She’s up there so I can’t make fun of her
and since she never watches any of these and normally, I get away with it and she doesn’t
never see them, and everything is good but today I can't because she’s in her shop. So,
we’re over restricted on that one.
Anyway, today we are tasting a cheese from Sardegna which is not anything super unique
into itself. For various reasons, I’ll get into that in a minute, and a Wild Boar Prosciutto.
Wild Boar Prosciutto—I had a bunch before. I like really like it a lot. It’s not as so unique
like the Duck Prosciutto we did and it was really unique and a really great, that was
something. But this again, is not something you find everywhere. This happened to come
from Fairway, again, which I love the store. I'm sure the Gourmet Library has it also so
check their site out. They ship. But, talking about the—and what else? Let me see that I
need help for—do for a hair trim.
Let’s see oh. Right down here underneath the little tweeter bun, there’s a link of little
thing to fill in your email address in. You can put that in and then you get an email
whatever the blog is updated, which is something that will be pretty good going forward
because in the next month or so, I'm going to start adding some new features and new
things in where I go back to some past episodes, and if it’s a original dish in Italy or a
original dish in Mexico, just add some or written notes or some small videos about the
ingredients, or possibly, there I’d say actually write a recipe out. So, there’s going to be
some updates going to some older content. I may make a new tab for to highlight those
things and then just move them.
Anyway, put your email address in there. It’s your feed burner, you’ve just got to type in
one of those weird codes that you can never get right, and ask it like nine times, and you
sit there entering, you get pissed and you leave the site and never go back. Anyway, so
enter in your email address there and then when the site updates in theory, you should get
an email that says there’s no big sites updated. You could check it out. So, the new
comments seemed to be working fairly well, stay over a couple of weeks, and I guess
three weeks or so with those, which is good.
But, let's get to the cheese, let my cameraman earned his money? So, this is a hard rind
cheese, again, from Sardegna or Sardegna. And Sardegna is an island in the
Mediterranean off the coast of Italy so I think the largest—maybe the largest or second
largest island there. The cheese is a hard cheese. It’s a sheep’s milk cheese and cow’s
milk cheese combined.
Okay, and basically just a quick history on their cheese making there, something I just
recently did a little research on which was a good to know is that mostly the Pecorino
Romano or pecorino, I mean sheep. So when you see pecorino, it’s not a region, it’s not.
Pecorino means sheep. Sheep’s milk that cheeses make from sheep’s milk but most of
your Pecorino Romano’s are actually made in Sardegna. That’s where they come from.
There were at some point a ban on using cheap salt in cheese in Rome so all the sheep—I
mean all the production of that cheese went to the island and that were, I think—I don’t
want to say 70% of it comes from. There are still where the spots in Italy that are allowed
to make it under the DOB designation or some DOC regardless, it will be in the notes.
Basically, it’s a saltier cheese. This one I've tried but the Pecorino Romano is a saltier
cheese, is the firm cheese, is a grating cheese, generally not cut in a hunk to sit there and
a munch on. In fact, in Italy, it’s used in a bunch of standard dishes but it’s nowhere near
as popular as let's say the Parmigiano-Reggiano is now, or even the Gamonedo and those
who have taking over where the—because those are cheeses you can eat without grating.
You can also grate them which is great, and you can eat them on the road. They’re much
fuller round body tasting cheese where the Pecorino Romano tends to be more of a salty
sharper type of cheese.
Anyway, let's give this a whirl, and this is definitely on the harder side. It’s, I would say,
a few—maybe this age is about six to12 months. This is really nice. This is definite if you
like Pecorino Romano, and you like a sharper cheese but you find it as eating pecorino on
its own is a little bit much, this is really nice. I guess the cow’s milk smooth it out
because it’s a combination of cow’s milk and sheep’s milk, and it’s made—I have it
written down—Ferruccio Podda. You do get some of that milk burned on the back that
you’ll get from your pecorino. There, yeah really nice. It’s a pretty intense cheese for
sure.
You really got a nice nuttiness on there. You almost get like a toasted pine up taste in
there. Really nice! This is definitely—I mean if you want a big cheese to eat that’s going
to stand up to anything you're drinking, you're working scotch, and this is going to go
with it. Maybe you're drinking a big wine. This is going to go with it. No doubt about it,
and this right at that level I’d say right before you get to a point where you probably don’t
want to serve this at a cheese party. This is definitely right before that level, a Pecorino
Romano. You're not breaking enough chunks and putting it out for cheese tasting party.
It’s just not something that you want to use for that. I don’t love Pecorino Romano. I
happen to eat it a lot but this is nice. This will definitely complement a lot of things.
And the reason I have is because I ask the cheese god at Fairway to give me something to
complement the wild boar prosciutto. So, here is the wild boar prosciutto. Hold that up
for you and let's unwrap it. It just has a great earthy smell to it. You could smell some of
the herbs that were used on it when it was dry hanged—hanged to dry. There’s a sweet
smell to it, really nice! This brings in some of the gaminess that you don’t necessarily get
in your Prosciutto de Parmas. This adds a little extra layer of — I don’t know how to
explain it—it’s just a natural dimension.
I don’t see a greenness because that’s not really what I'm looking for but it adds almost
like a mushroom would add to dish like a good hearty—like a porcini. If you take a
Prosciutto de Parma, add in a slight porcini flavor to it, which I'm saying that’s sort of
what you're getting here. That’s kind of the taste that you're getting here.
Like I said, the wild boar—the Cinghiale is one of my favorite meats period. I'm going to
track this up with the cheese and see how this goes together. And there’s a couple of
places you can get it, there’s a place in Oakland, New Jersey that does the Cinghiale.
This, like I said, it came from Fairway and Gourmetlibrary.com has it also. I’ll put the
links up. And this go really well together. This is a great call by the cheese guy. They just
really go well together because actually in Sardegna—I really should look up some of
these pronunciations before I start talking but nah that may still one of it.
What’s interesting for an island, the vast population and production are already against up
in the hills. So, they’re not an island tight. When you think of island, you think of Sicily
and you think of Capri and Medici. Alright I’m an idiot. Anyway, those are island
communities where they’re on the coast, they’re’ fishing, that’s their culture, their food,
Sardegna not so much. They are a meat cheese producing area. They are in the hills.
That’s where they could stay safe. That’s — I mean because remember, you're going
back to old, old, old times, and there were attackers, invaders, people are stopping there
to plunder, to go attack other the places so they needed to be up in the hill regions.
So, it’s not surprising that this gamey wild boar prosciutto would go well with the cheese.
Really nice! The fat from the wild boar totally takes the sharpness. The harder edge of
this cheese, this is an outstanding combination, and I’ll tell you, I’d really like to have a
little bit of pasta, dice up a little of this prosciutto—this wild boar prosciutto. Just toss it
in right at the end with a little olive oil and really do a nice heavy, grate—like a thick
grate of this cheese on top. I think it would be a grand slam maybe probably a few toasted
walnuts and pignoli nuts and even walnuts would be good, I think they do walnuts in
Sardegna. I think a really nice combination.
Anyway, that is it. I will see you next time and sign up for the email. Anyway, that’s it.
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