SC - Apples Galore!

[Stefan li Rous]

> >
Adamantius said:
> You ever notice how most large pieces of meat are roasted, while a ham is
> almost invariably referred to as baked, even though nowadays both
> functions
> are generally performed in an oven? This wasn't always the case.
> Some meat was
> roasted over, or in front of, a fire, while other meats were
> baked in ovens,
> generally meaning they were put into large pies. Large, dry birds
> like turkeys
> or even swans were prime candidates for baking in pastry. Being
> large, they
> had to be cooked for a long time to be sure they were done, and
> the pastry was
> there to protect the meat and keep it from turning into plywood.
>
> Ham has been baked in pastry since at least the lifetime of
> Apicius. Most of
> the available recipes don't indicate that the pastry is to be eaten (BTW,
> sorry, folks, but Apician ham is indeed boiled with figs and
> baked in pastry,
> but the figs seem to get thrown away in the original recipe,
> before baking,
> and the pastry may have been used to thicken a sauce, but probably wasn't
> eaten with the ham, so while Ham Newtons might make an
> interesting peri-oid
> food, I wouldn't document them back to Apicius in an A&S
> competition were I
> you). One of the good things about slowly baking ham in a pastry or other
> cover is that it doesn't get _really_ brown and crusty: being a
> cured meat it
> is already somewhat drier than other meats, so that nice brown part can be
> really salty and hard. Another, more imprtant aspect is the fact that ham,
> being for practical purposes a leg, has a lot of connective
> tissue. Unless you
> want an awful lot of gristle that can't be carved, let alone
> chewed, you need
> to cook a ham a bit longer than you might other meats.
<snip>

My mom used to do an awesome ham wrapped in ryebread dough.  ( i think it
was rye bread )
It kept the juices in and  was always discarded after cooking. ( Well sure i
did try a nibble but it was nothing i would reccomend. ) Sigh. She never
wrote down the recipie...  and i never thought to  ask  her about it. It'll
be something to ask about next time i head   to Chicago.

Zoe

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