What started as innocent curiosity has now spiralled out of control. For some reason, I caught myself taking pictures of enormous legs of pata negra ham at Gallerie Lafayette and drooling over the prospect of potentially having more at some unknown date in the future. I now know the prices of pata negra in 3 different countries: England, France, and Hong Kong - and I think that qualifies this state of being, officially, as a semi-obsession with Iberian ham. The average "leg" of Iberian ham, after sneaking a look at the official grocer's information tag (which is not supposed to be shared with the public) is 8 kilos, making the retail value of each leg well over 1500USD in every country surveyed:

England: lowest price seen = 125 pounds sterling/kilo
France: lowest price seen = 210 euros/kilo
Hong Kong: lowest price seen (only one known) = 1500HKD/kilo

I post some pictures of the "room of legs" at the Lafayette food hall:















And I continue, with one final, glorious picture of an entire leg, up close (because, American friends, this is the closest you're going to get to some for a while if you choose to stay in America. There is one plant, however, that has been recently build which IS up to FDA snuff but it will be a few years before it will have exportable stock. So drool on for now).











I will post again shortly. On Cheesecake. And other musings