SC - ham

[Phil & Susan Troy]

Stefan li Rous wrote:
> 
> Mordonna said:
> 
> *What my Big Mama did with a (small ) cured ham.  First soak it, whole,
> *overnight in cold water in the fridge.  Then drain, and soak 1 hour in warm
> *water.  Then score the skin in a diamond design.  Then pack with brown sugar,
> *all over the outside of the ham.  Then affix with toothpicks pineapple slices
> *and stick whole cloves in the skin.
> *then bake for 4 or 5 hours.
> 
> Ok, another beginning cook question:
> 
> Four or five hours? If the ham is already preserved and smoked, why do you
> need to cook it for another four or five hours? Does it take that long for
> the inside of a non-frozen ham to heat up?

All right. Now you've done it. You're for it now, my lad. You have activated
automated program section 46-z-12, The Ham Talk.

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.

Finally, I can see baking a ham for that long if you want to infuse the meat
with the flavor of the various cloves, brown sugar, pineapple slices, or
whatever strange stuff you are accustomed to putting on your ham. One of the
best ways to do this is to cook it very gently and slowly, for a long time.
Like, say, a 250 or 300 degree F. oven for five hours or more? Many people
boil a ham before baking, and this is partly personal taste, and also depends
on what type of ham it is...some are purchased precooked. Both Armour and
Hormel, known for abominations like Spam, actually still sell fairly decent
hams, on the bone, and these are sometimes marked "fully cooked", which means
all you have to do is unwrap and glaze the beast however you choose. This type
of ham you might bake for 2 or 3 hours, depending on how much of a stickler
you are.

There is a marvellously detailed fictional description of the entire baked ham
process in Jean Shepherd's short story, "The Grandstand Passion Play of
Delbert and the Bumpus Hounds" (I think it's in the book, "Wanda Hickey's
Night of Golden Memories", but I'm not certain that's correct). That part of
the story shows up in the movie based on several Shepherd stories, "A
Christmas Story", but for some reason it has become a turkey for the movie.
  
Adamantius 
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
============================================================================

To be removed from the SCA-Cooks mailing list, please send a message to
Majordomo at Ansteorra.ORG with the message body of "unsubscribe SCA-Cooks".

============================================================================