An unalloyed gaminess comes through in La Quercia prosciutto, which is exactly what the Eckhouses want. "It's expressing terroir," Kathy says, motioning to the windblown landscape. "This is what we have."
At the end of the long months of curing, the hams are cut down and trimmed, then wrapped and shipped to some of the best restaurants in America.
In Los Angeles, depending on the vicissitudes of the chefs, you might find La Quercia speck at Mozza or at Costa Mesa's Marche Moderne, \o7guanciale\f7 at Cut, or prosciutto americano on the charcuterie plate at A.O.C. On an afternoon last week, Kathy was overnight-shipping orders to two frantic customers -- a batch of La Quercia Rossa to New York's Le Cirque restaurant and a parcel of\o7 \f7\o7culaccia bianca\f7\o7 \f7(cured fat sheared from prosciutto) to Postrio in Las Vegas. For the rest of the day, Herb chuckled as he muttered "emergency \o7lardo\f7!" over and over, amused by the whims of the nation's \o7salumi\f7-infatuated chefs.
"When we started out," he says, "the goal was to have a ham that could stand up to the great hams of Europe; we've done that."
So now the Eckhouses are ready to take their ham to the next level. They want to take those Berkshire pigs and feed them acorns at the end of their life, just as the pork for \o7prosciutto di Parma \f7was once accomplished, and the Spanish \o7jamon iberico \f7is still.
To that end, last month, the Eckhouses and organic farmer Jude Becker, from whom La Quercia currently sources all its organic pork, began a new project. Becker is now raising 50 purebred Berkshire and Berkshire-cross pigs specifically for La Quercia, pigs that he'll "finish" with organic acorns.
How perfect that outside the company's decidedly utilitarian building, a sapling oak tree planted by the Eckhouses sways in the prairie wind. La Quercia, "the oak" in Italian, is both a symbol of the province of Parma and the Iowa state tree.
Could it be that the Iowa terroir is as good as that of Parma for prosciutto? When the weather seems right, Herb opens the windows in the aging room to the air blowing in off the fields of thistle and clover. "I don't know that the air is unimportant," he says, "maybe it's really important. Maybe it's more important to me than it is to the ham."
amy.scattergood@latimes.com
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Get your hands on the good stuff
La Quercia products, including La Quercia Rossa, are available from www.laquercia.us; Froma on Melrose, 7960 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles, (323) 653-3700; and Lucca Cafe & Market, 6507 Quail Hill Parkway, Irvine, (949) 725-1773, www.luccacafe.com. Whole Foods stores carry some La Quercia products.
-- Amy Scattergood
