The black footed pig that produces Spain’s most famous food product.  Iberico pork.  We’ve practically OD’d on this, especially in the first week in Madrid and Salamanca.  The Spanish are very proud of their pig and it’s products and I must say, deservedly so.

If I hadn’t been told it was pork I was eating as an eye fillet the other day I wouldn’t have known.  Very hard to describe – something in-between lamb and beef perhaps.  Not with a gamey flavour at all as I’m not a fan of game meat in particular.

The famous Iberian pig has an extremely good life.  It’s allowed to roam practically wherever it likes and during the summer finds it’s way underneath as many Cork Oaks as it can where it literally stuffs itself day in and day out with Cork Oak acorns which flavours the meat – until the uninitiated, such as myself, can’t tell what they are eating – just that it is magnificent.  The salami type product that is made from pure iberian pig sells for over 100 Euro a kilo.   This is from pigs that are finished off completely underneath the Cork Oak trees – not a bad way to end your existence if you are a pig!