A Love Affair with Southern Cooking (19 page)

I went to the Mason City Café, Home-Cooked Meals for Ladies and Gents, facing the square, and sampled the mash potatoes and fried ham and greens with pot-likker.

—
ROBERT PENN WARREN
,
ALL THE KING’S MEN

MARYLAND STUFFED HAM

MAKES
6
TO
8
SERVINGS

This is an old, old Maryland recipe that I tasted for the first time while on an article assignment on the Eastern Shore. Before the food processor, the stuffing must have been tedious to prepare because there were so many ingredients to chop: spinach, parsley, watercress, scallions. I now commit them all to the machine and let it do the work. This is an unusually colorful way to prepare ham; its rose-red and green hues make it a Christmas favorite. Good accompaniments:
sweet potatoes prepared any which way, Green Beans with Browned Butter and Pecans, and James River Corn Pudding.

4 ounces tender young spinach, trimmed of coarse stems, washed well, and patted dry on paper toweling

1 cup loosely packed curly parsley leaves

¼ cup loosely packed tender young watercress leaves

4 medium scallions, trimmed and chunked (include some green tops)

¼ teaspoon black pepper

One 6-to 7-pound fully cooked, shank-end half ham

1½ cups dry white wine (for basting)

• 1.
  Preheat the oven to 325° F.
  
• 2.
  Finely chop the spinach in two batches by whizzing in a food processor for 10 seconds. As each batch is chopped, empty into a large bowl. Add the parsley, watercress, scallions, and pepper to the processor bowl and churn 10 to 12 seconds until finely chopped. Add to the spinach and toss well to combine.
  
• 3.
  Cut away and discard any tough rind on the ham, then trim the outer covering of fat until it is no more then ¼ inch thick. Using a sharp paring knife, make deep X-shaped cuts over the surface of the ham (each prong of the X should be about 1½ inches long), spacing the Xs about 1½ inches apart.
  
• 4.
  Set the ham on a counter covered with wax paper, then, using a teaspoon or your fingers, pack the spinach mixture firmly into each cut. This is messy business. Once the ham is completely stuffed, wipe its surface with dampened paper toweling to remove any spatters or spills of filling.
  
• 5.
  Place the ham in an ungreased large shallow roasting pan and slide onto the middle oven shelf. Bake uncovered for 2½ hours or until lightly browned, basting every half hour with the wine.
  
• 6.
  Remove the ham from the oven and let stand for 30 minutes before carving.
  

COUNTRY HAM AND RED-EYE GRAVY

MAKES
4
SERVINGS

I didn’t taste country ham or red-eye gravy until the summer that I was ten. My family and I were driving north to visit my Ohio grandmother and after overnighting at a tourist court in the Virginia Blue Ridge, we stopped at a little mom-and-pop café-cum-gas-station for breakfast. This was my first true southern country breakfast and I was thrilled. Not so my mother, father, and brother, all of whom thought the country ham too salty and too tough. And what was it with the coffee gravy? When I asked my parents why the red-eye gravy had such a funny name, they hadn’t a clue. Nor to this day have I found a surefire answer. Some say that when the ham is done and the skillet deglazed, the browned bits floating to the top resemble red eyes. I personally favor a theory suggested by John Egerton in
Southern Food: At Home, on the Road, in History
(1987). Apocryphal or not,
it credits Andrew Jackson with inadvertently coming up with the name. To quote Egerton: “[Jackson] reportedly instructed a whiskey-drinking cook of his to bring him some ham with gravy ‘as red as your eyes’.”

Although the Southerners I know all make their red-eye with black coffee, Egerton prefers water, explaining that if the country ham is properly cured and properly smoked, the gravy doesn’t need coffee to boost its flavor. He has a point. Still, for me the best red-eye does contain black coffee and that’s the recipe I give here. Note:
Many southern supermarkets sell prepackaged “Country Ham Wafer Thins,” slices of salt-cured, hickory-smoked country ham about six inches long, two and a half inches wide, and a fourth of an inch thick. Each weighs just shy of an ounce and two slices per person is about right.
Tip:
Most country ham is fat enough to lubricate the skillet; if not, heat a little vegetable oil or bacon drippings in the skillet before adding the ham.

1 tablespoon vegetable oil or bacon drippings (see Tip above)

8 thin slices country ham (about 8 ounces) (see Note above)

½ cup warm black coffee

• 1.
  If the ham is lean, heat the vegetable oil in a large, heavy skillet over moderately high heat for about a minute before adding the ham. If not, add the ham directly to the hot skillet. Cook the ham for about 2 minutes on each side or until richly browned; transfer to paper toweling to drain.
  
• 2.
  Pour the coffee into the skillet and simmer for about 2 minutes, scraping up the browned bits on the skillet bottom. Do not allow to boil; the gravy will turn bitter.
  
• 3.
  To serve, arrange the country ham on heated plates and accompany with grits and/or freshly baked biscuits. Pass the red-eye gravy separately. Some Southerners spoon the red-eye over their grits (and/or biscuits), some ladle it over their ham, and some slosh it over everything. There’s no right or wrong.
  

MUSTARD-GLAZED HAM LOAF

MAKES
6
TO
8
SERVINGS

Meat loaves, especially ham loaves, have always been popular below the Mason-Dixon because they’re versatile, they’re filling, and they offer every opportunity to recycle leftovers. This one of mine is equally good hot or cold. It is delicious “straight up,” but I like it even better topped with the Sour Cream–Dill Sauce that follows. Note:
Though supermarkets now sell ground raw pork, it’s sometimes impossible to buy ground ham, but that’s not a problem if you own a food processor. Cut the ham into 1-inch cubes, removing excess fat and connective tissue as you go, then pulse in batches until moderately finely ground. If you have no processor, I’m afraid you’ll have to feed the ham through a meat grinder.

1 pound moderately finely ground smoked ham

¾ pound moderately finely ground pork

1½ cups soft white bread crumbs, coarsely crumbled stale corn bread, or leftover cooked rice

¾ cup fresh orange juice or chicken broth or a combination of the two

½ cup mustard pickle relish

1 medium yellow onion, finely chopped

2 large eggs

¼ cup coarsely chopped parsley

½ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon

¼ teaspoon ground ginger

¼ teaspoon black pepper

½ cup orange marmalade blended with 2 tablespoons prepared yellow mustard (glaze)

• 1.
  Preheat the oven to 375° F. Coat a 9 × 5 × 3-inch loaf pan with nonstick cooking spray and set aside.
  
• 2.
  Place all ingredients except the last (the glaze) in a large bowl and mix thoroughly, using your hands. Scoop into the pan, packing firmly and mounding slightly in the center.
  
• 3.
  Bake in the lower third of the oven for 40 minutes. Spread the glaze on top, reduce the oven temperature to 350° F., and bake 15 to 20 minutes longer or until nicely browned and an instant-read meat thermometer thrust into the middle of the loaf registers 165° F.
  
• 4.
  Let the ham loaf rest for 20 minutes in the upright pan on a wire rack, then loosen around the edge with a thin-blade spatula and ease onto a heated platter.
  
• 5.
  Turn right side up, slice, and serve. Or if you prefer, chill well and serve cold.
  

SOUR CREAM–DILL SAUCE

MAKES ABOUT
1
CUP

¾ cup sour cream

¼ cup finely snipped fresh dill

2 tablespoons mayonnaise (use “light,” if you like)

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

1 tablespoon well-drained small capers

1 tablespoon milk or as needed to thin to the consistency of medium white sauce

• 1.
  Whisk all ingredients together in a small, nonreactive bowl.
  
• 2.
  Transfer to a sauceboat and serve with the Mustard-Glazed Ham Loaf that precedes. Or serve as an accompaniment to boiled or baked ham.
  

TENNESSEE COUNTRY HAM AND HOMINY HASH

MAKES
4
SERVINGS

Blackberry Farm, one of America’s most luxurious country inns, is about a half-hour drive east of Knoxville, Tennessee, just where the Smokies rise out of the foothills. Its gifted chef is John Fleer, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, who has developed what he calls “Foothills Cuisine” to showcase the local bounty. Among his signature dishes is this rib-sticking hash, which I enjoyed while there. Note:
The hominy you want for this recipe is “big” or whole hominy, not cooked grits, which some Southerners also call hominy.
Tip:
If country ham is unavailable in small amounts where you live (it often is outside of the South), substitute domestic prosciutto or failing that, Italian prosciutto. Both work well in this recipe. You’ll need one slice about
¼
inch thick (approximately four ounces).