So I interrupt my voyages in London to bring you, reader, this posting of great importance. Today, Ted and I tried the famous "pata negra" Spanish Ham. For those of you in North America and who read the Times' Dining & Wine section, this is THE famous ham that cannot be imported to anywhere in North America due to the lack of processing plants in Spain which are up to FDA snuff.

So boy and I traipsed off to Fortnum and Mason today for tea and after eating buckets of clotted cream, scones, smoked salmon and "mousse" sandwiches, we continued our food shopping extravaganza of the previous day. We picked up the F&M strawberry Preserve, a can of the blackcurrant tea(!), a box of assam and some cheesecake, to complement the spoils of the previous day, which included a hoarding of English Breakfast, various fruit teas and other goodies. It was all I could do not to buy cans and cans of duck confit (a decidedly expensive habit that I would not be able to shake once I got to New York). It was passing the deli counter that I saw the ham. We bought a hundred grams of it for the hideous price of 13 pounds (about three times as expensive as Prosciutto San Daniel and Prosciutto Di Parma) and *only* twenty times less expensive than Beluga Caviar. We then ran off to McDonalds to open our spoils and eat. And oh lord, eat we did. We bought the "grand reserve" ham, figuring that "grand reserve" meant it was probably worth the extra cost.

The first bite was not fabulous. It is a rather fatty type of ham, with a thick crust of just plain lard coating the outside. The meat is decidedly much more intense and much darker than Prosciutto. It was not an earth shattering experience until we neared the end of the 100 grams. It was there we realized it was a bit like eating Prosciutto with a slice of truffle. It had the rich, truffly undertones which was overscored by the intense ham flavor (I can't describe it any other way. If you could somehow intensify the taste of top grade prosciutto by two to three times I suppose that's close enough). It was good. The aftertaste lingered a long time without being rancid and it was much stronger than the coke we'd bought from McD's to wash it all down. And it was expensive. But worth it because now I can die happier. It was wonderful, and I will be sure to get my greedy meathooks on it whenever possible.