Parma ham is made from three simple yet fundamental ingredients: select pig thighs, salt, and the right air. Yes, air is an ingredient too. The air is noticeable in spring when you go for a drive in your car or on your motor bike around the Langhirano hills, just above the town where Parma ham is made. You're in the land of ham. You are reminded of it round every bend as you drive past signs indicating family businesses, large companies or artisans who have been making it for ten, twenty, and fifty years. Everyone is eager to tell you about it. They're proud of it. You breathe in the fresh air and you're just a short distance from the mountains. All that air stirs the appetite - after all, it's nearly midday. You stop at the first trattoria you come across and you immediately see that in places like this, everything is bound to be delicious.

You order something and enjoy that characteristic, mildly savoury flavour balanced by an inexplicable sweetness with a couple of slices of homemade bread, a few Parmigiano Reggiano shards, a couple of slices of melon in the summer or some figs in the autumn.