Miles Collins

Spanish ham with melon…

Here’s a very simple starter we are doing at one of our beach restaurants in Marbella, Spain. Fantastic serrano ham, freshly sliced to order with some ripe,delicious melon served slightly chilled. It’s one of the easiest starters I’ve ever done but one of the most effective and small wonder why it features on menus up and down the country.

The key to food of such siplicity is quality of ingredients, the melon has to be ripe, served at the right temperature and the ham, well that is another story….

Here I’ve used serrano ham, the Spanish equivelent of bayonne ham from France or prosciutto from Italy. Most common serrano hams come from a breed of white pig called Landrace. The jamon, pronounced HA-MON is basically a cured back leg of pork, dried for anywhere between seven and forty months depending on its quality. There are better hams to be eaten such as Iberico but the serrano is a great staple and perfect for a low cost (in comparrison) salad or starter. You should be able to find ready sliced serrano in most deli’s and supermarkets, save a couple of slices for something else, a flavouring in a soup, paella or a simple toasted sandwich or tostada.

We serve serrano in all of our Spanish kitchens, there is a meat slicer on all of the cold sections so the meat can be freshly sliced to order. Seeing a whole cured ham in the window of an old fashioned tapas bar is commonplace in Spain and I’ve enjoyed more than the occasional plate of it. Sliced and presented on little more than some greaseproof paper I really don’t think I would want to try it any other way.

Serrano Ham and Melon