Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

The most disturbing aspect of this development (and many others) is that the majority of the American market will complacently support flavored fish, just as it does most other bastardizations of actual food and other natural resources.

I'm pretty partial to dry sheep's milk cheeses, actually. But both Parmigiano and Pecorino have their applications. I love them both, and I see no reason to ascribe elevated to one above the other. Don't ask me which part of the lamb is my favorite either. I'll similarly reply that I'll have some of each.

John J. Goddard
Articles of Mastication
Dalmatian Cooking

Ah, but Mizbee... There is no substitute for the grassy herb and bright, smoky heat flavors of true Jamaican jerk paste! I heartily recommend making a batch from scratch with a fresh Scotch Bonnet pepper.

I'm also partial to Dalmatian pršut, especially the drier, older stuff. Ideally, the leg is cured in pure Adriatic seawater (from the Croatian side, where it's cleaner!), pressed between two stones to remove the water, then dried in the Bura winds over winter. Sometimes it gets smoke during aging, sometimes not. One of my neighbors in Marina (about 20 minutes from Trogir) makes the absolute finest dry-cured ham I've ever tasted. Pršut is also often sliced a little (or a lot) thicker, which makes eating it an exquisitely slow, visceral mastication. When we watched the 2006 World Cup on the docks in Kućište, across the canal from Korčula, we got by with little more than a whole pršut, a fairly dull cleaver, a few loaves of bread, a wheel of Paški sir and some olive oil. And wine. I actually prefer having to work on a slice of pršut for five minutes.

As for what's readily - and legally - available in the US, I find myself drawn more to Spanish jamons, probably because they remind me more of pršut than the sweeter, more fragrant Italian variants. I'm not at all against sweet aromatic hams; I'll gladly gobble them down. But the unornamented flavor and deep crimson hue of pršut? Nothing finer, or more pure and essentially "pork" for me.

I haven't had too many Istrian hams, but I'm sure Mario's partner Mr. Bastianich could tell us a thing or two about them.