(adapted from Manfred Becker, Haiger)
Ingredients: New potatoes, caraway seeds; per person 100 g Holsteiner Katenschinken in slices, fresh butter, salt.
Boil potatoes with salt and caraway seeds like jacket potatoes, steam and peel. Meanwhile, layer the slices of ham and cut into ½ cm wide strips, then cut the strips crosswise into again ½ cm small pieces. Halve the peeled potatoes, butter and salt them. Then sprinkle the ham on top, done.
Tasty on its own, with a green salad and of course with asparagus.
Cooked ham, type 1905
.Manfred Becker has only been present on the Frankfurt markets for a short time - by the way, he wouldn't mind if there was still a place on one or the other - and unquestionably his ham range is an enrichment.
Not only is the offer convincing, but, one can hear, "der Becker also has a clue". This is the result of many years of occupation with the subject, since 1976 the trained forwarding merchant is present with his hams on weekly markets; the market business he had copied from his father-in-law, a baker. He then decided on quality and constantly expanded his horizons by visiting producers abroad. Like recently in Parma, where Becker took part in a five-day trade fair in order to deepen the good contacts he has long had with small but fine producers who produce Parma or San Daniele ham the old-fashioned way. This broadens the horizon and increases the awareness of quality, which, Manfred Becker unfortunately has to say, is not as pronounced in Germany as it is with our neighbours. But he also tries to improve it at home, for example by working together with Westerwald butchers who practice home slaughtering as in the past. Meat salad and meat sausage, smoked overnight and available on the market the next day; freshly baked Leberkäse or freshly smoked Mettwurst in the morning are convincing examples.
His cooked ham is no less so; the Prague-style is baked at night. Sliced, it falls apart before, because Becker disapproves of the excessive "polishing" of hams. Exposing them to twisting movements in drums, he says, does indeed break down the protein better, but diminishes the aroma.
Also in Eichsfeld, Thuringia, a region once famous for its hams and sausages, Becker looked around and has Feldkieker and Stracke to offer, but especially hams made from the meat of twelve- to thirteen-month-old pigs. These cooked hams do indeed taste "like they used to", and Becker calls them "type 1905" for that reason.
But the Rolls Royce of hams is called Pata Negra, comes from the Spanish province of Extremadura, and is made from the meat of black pigs fattened on acorns for two years. The hams mature for another two years, and while they're not cheap, they're also worth the money.
You'll find about twenty varieties of raw, smoked or air-dried hams at Becker's stand, with about ten varieties of cooked ones thrown in. With asparagus he recommends Hol-steiner Katenschinken, matured for seven months and weighing up to twenty kilos, which also enhances jacket potatoes. Mrs Ursula, meanwhile, likes twenty-month-old Parma with asparagus, with the Schinken-Becker stamp.
Schinken Becker GmbH
Manfred and Ursula Becker
Kalteiche
35708 Haiger/Westerwald
Tel.: 02736-3638, Fax: 3675
Mobile: 0172-2757125
Markets in Frankfurt, Thursdays: Kaiserstrasse; Fridays: Schillerstrasse. Always 9 am-6 pm.
from Waldemar Thomas