Sickles Market - Gourmet Club

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PLEASE NOTE:
As of March 30th, The Gourmet Club will be part of the Good Stuff Club. Please be sure to sign up for the Good Stuff Club with the cashiers in order to continue receiving a discount on the featured items.

March 17, 2008 – March 30, 2008

Product of the Week – Ham – D’Artagnan’s Petite Heritage Ham, Boar’s Head Sweet Ham, Sickles Own Honey Ham, Spiral-cut Ham (either Hatfield or Carando), and fresh ham.

Some of my earliest food memories are of holiday meals and ham was often a featured menu item. We always had ham for New Year’s Day and also for Easter dinner as well as other special occasions that involved lots of people, whether it was baptisms, birthdays, or anniversaries. Until about fifteen or twenty years, the ham was always bone-in with the skin and fat intact. I can remember my mom cooking the ham with the skin on until the last 40 or 50 minutes, when she would remove it from the oven and dad would sharpen his carving knife and then remove most of the crispy, crunchy skin that was bursting with flavor. He and I would stand in the corner of the kitchen crunching away while mom made a sauce of sherry, brown sugar, and dry mustard and spoon it over the ham and then put it back in the oven to finish cooking. The ham was so delicious with the sauce (a combination of sweet and spicy) but, looking back, the best part was sharing the crispy skin with my dad.

Ham is a wonderful food, somewhat salty, flavorful, and, if it is a good one, with a good texture. It is incredibly versatile. Start with baked ham for dinner one night and have left-overs for several nights thereafter, unless you want to get slightly creative. Ham and macaroni and cheese is a favorite with my family, but so is quiche made with minced ham instead of bacon, or omelets made with slivers of ham and good gruyere, thinly sliced ham and Swiss on a croissant, good rye, or (my favorite) a crusty baguette (especially if you put it under the broiler for a few minutes to melt the cheese and don’t forget the mustard – either grainy or sweet!), on buttermilk biscuits (again with good mustard) or in salad or tossed in pasta. I could go on and on but you get the idea. Just don’t throw the bone away when the ham is almost gone. Use it to make split pea or lentil soup and, of course, add some chopped up ham to the soup as well. What a great meal on a cold day! Easter will be here this weekend and we have several different hams to choose from for your Easter dinner. I have included recipes for some delicious glazes to baste the ham with during the last bit of cooking time. Add some scalloped potatoes or sweet potatoes and a some asparagus or green beans, and a salad and dinner is done! Best of all there should be some ham left over!

RECIPES –
Le Nemrod’s Auvergne-style Salad; Roasted Fresh Ham with Orange Glaze; Fresh Ham with Red Chile Marinade; Ham-and-Cheese Tartines; Ham, Potato and Cheddar Cheese Gratin; Ham and Cheddar Scones; Denver Sandwich; Monte Cristo Sandwich; Betty’s Ham Salad; Honeyed Ham with Pears and Cranberries; Fettuccine with Mint, Peas, Ham, and Cream; Ham Glazes (While the Recipe Archives at www.sicklesmarket.com are under construction, ask at the office for copies of any that you would like to try).

HAM –
Ham is made from the hind quarter of the pig, usually from the middle of the shank bone to the aitch (hip) bone. Fresh ham is unprocessed (neither cured or smoked) pork from the hind quarter of the pig. Cured ham has gone through a curing process. The flavor of the cured ham is dependent upon many factors including the breed of the pig, what it was fed, and the age at slaughter. It will also depend on the curing method – dry salted or brine cured and smoked or not smoked. Most countries have one or more special varieties of cured ham, including Italy’s Prosciutto di Parma and Spain’s Jamón Serrano. These hams are dry salted and then aged for between eight months and two years without smoking. The southern United States is known for its dry salted, smoked hams which are referred to as Virginia, Kentucky, or Tennessee, or country hams, such as Smithfield hams from Smithfield, Virginia. They have a firm, dry texture and are very full flavored and quite salty. Those that are aged a year or more are an acquired taste.

The hams being featured today are salt cured by being immersed or injected with a brine (salt water) and are then smoked. They are referred to as city hams and have a moist texture and are less salty than country hams but may still have a rich, full flavor due to the smoking process. City hams can come bone-in, semi-boneless, or boneless and are usually labeled ready to eat or fully cooked and will just need to be heated and glazed before serving. The best of the city hams (such as the ones being featured today) will have some of the flavor and texture of the country hams without all the salt and extra labor required to prepare them.

Fresh bone-in hams, each weighing about 10 pounds, will be available by special order. Just ask Trish at the meat counter.

Sickles Own Honey Ham is a brine cured boneless ham that has been cooked with our own special glaze. It is available at the deli counter by the slice, thin for sandwiches or thick for dinner or by the piece (about 4 pounds each).

Boar’s Head Sweet Ham is a brine cured boneless ham weighing about 3 pounds that has a mild, slightly salty, sweet flavor and is nice and moist. It lives up to Boar’s Head high standards for all their deli products.

Trish will have bone-in spiral-sliced ham available for Easter. They will either be from Hatfield or Carando, depending upon availability. Hatfield Quality Meats is a family owned business that has been producing high quality pork products for over a century. Their pigs are raised on farms that are concerned with the pig’s welfare and employ humane handling techniques. They believe that humane handling techniques improve the flavor and quality of their meats. Hatfield hardwood smoked spiral-sliced hams are from the shank portion of the hind leg and has the shank bone and femur still in place. Each ham also comes with its own honey glaze packet that is easy to use and tasty. Carando spiral-sliced bone-in hams are made by Carando Fine Foods, which was established in 1933 by Peter Carando, who came to New England from Italy in the early 1900’s. This company is known for high quality products. In addition, Carando developed the machine that spiral slices hams. Their spiral-sliced ham is honey and brine cured and hickory smoked. Their ham also comes with a honey glaze packet.

D’Artagan is well known in the food industry as a purveyor of very high quality foods. Their Heritage Hickory-smoked hams are part of that tradition. The word heritage refers to the heritage breed of pig – the Berkshire - their ham comes from. The Berkshire is a breed that has been in existence for over 300 years in England. Today, D’Artagnan gets their Certified Humane pork from family farms that practice sustainable farming practices. Their animals are not given antibiotics or grown hormones and are fed a vegetarian diet. The superior flavor of D’Artagnan hams is due, in part, to the way they are raised. Sickles carries their Heritage Applewood-Smoked Petite Ham (2.5 to 4 pounds each) and will be happy to special order their Heritage Hickory-Smoked Bone-in Whole Ham (14-16 pounds). Just ask at the cheese counter. Both hams derive their flavor from the combination of high quality meat, applewood smoking, and maple/brown sugar seasoning. They are fully cooked and just need to be heated before serving.

SOME SUGGESTIONS –
The Martha Stewart website offers the following suggestions:
 Do line your roasting pan with aluminum foil to prevent a difficult scouring job.
 Do leave the rind on during the first 2 hours of cooking: it allows the layer of fat underneath to slowly baste and flavor the meat during cooking.
 Do use a sharp knife with a long, thin blade for carving.
 Do invite a lot of people over when making a ham; a 16 pound ham can feed 18 to 20 people (estimate about ¾ pound per person for a bone-in ham and ½ pound for boneless).
 Don’t coat the ham with sugar until the last hour of cooking, or it will burn.
 Don’t baste the ham with the drippings from the pan; use extra glaze instead.
 Don’t throw out the ham bone. Use it to instead of a ham hock to flavor split-pea soup or bean dishes.
 Don’t forget that ham has only 140 calories in a 3-ounce serving.
(www.marthastewart.com)

PREPARING A WHOLE OR HALF BONE-IN COUNTRY HAM –
First rinse the ham under cool running water and, if the ham has been aged more than six months, place it in a large stockpot filled with cool water. Place the pot in a cool place and soak it for 36 hours to remove some of the salt it was cured with. Then drain the ham pat it dry. Place ham on a rack, rind side up in a roasting pan that has been lined with aluminum foil. Pour about ½ cup cider over the ham, if you wish, and bake the ham in a 350ºF. oven for 2 hours. Remove it from the oven and, when it is cool enough to handle, cut most of the rind off (don’t forget to enjoy a bit of the crunchy part), using either kitchen shears or a sharp knife. Then remove most of the fat but do leave about ¼ inch thick layer. Score the fat in a diamond pattern, cutting ¼ to ½ inch deep. If you choose you may put a whole clove in the spot where each diamond intersects. Then apply your chosen glaze, working it well into the scored fat and return the ham to the oven. Baste the ham every twenty to thirty minutes for about an hour, until the ham is brown and crusty. Remove the ham from the oven and let is rest for about 30 minutes before carving. Enjoy!

SERVING SUGGESTIONS –
As I mentioned earlier, there are myriad ways to serve ham, alone or in combination with other foods. What you combine it with will depend on what your personal preferences are for sweet, salty, spicy, and savory combinations. My mom’s glaze, which is the one I always use if I am baking a ham for dinner is really simple: combine about a cup of dry sherry with ½ cup of dark brown sugar and a teaspoon or two of dry mustard (to taste). Mix it well and spoon over the ham during the forty-five to sixty minutes of baking time.

In terms of ham sandwiches, there is the usual combination of ham and Swiss on rye with mustard and mayonnaise. Here, the variables that affect the taste are the type of rye (soft or firm, seeded or seedless) and the type of mustard, Dijon, yellow, hot and sweet, horseradish added, grainy, or smooth. You can then add lettuce and tomato or thin slices of apple or pear. Substituting brie, fontina, Manchego or a nice sharp Cheddar for the Swiss changes the taste again, as does changing the bread to pumpernickel, whole-grain, country white, or baguette. Take away the lettuce and add watercress for another great taste sensation. You can change the end result by placing the sandwich (open-faced) under the broiler until the cheese is melted and bubbling and the ham is warm or you can grill the sandwich after coating the outside of each bread slice with butter or good olive oil in either a frying pan or a panini grill (called a croquet monsieur, if you want to be fancy). Another option is the Monte Cristo Sandwich in the recipe section. It is an utterly delicious fancy grilled cheese sandwich.

Ham goes in quiche, scrambled eggs, and omelets. Try filling an omelet with some thin slices of ham, asparagus spears cut into sections, and crumbled fresh goat cheese. They are a great combination! Fried ham (one of my favorite childhood leftover dinners made with ham) pairs with eggs for breakfast or potatoes and a vegetable for dinner. Wrap thinly sliced ham around pencil thin asparagus for a delicious simple hors d’oeuvre. Another delicious appetizer is fresh buttermilk biscuits filled with ham and some mustard (your choice – they are all good!).

For me, ham is one of those foods that I adore but often forget about, partly because there is so much if you buy a half or whole ham. There is no question that the flavor of the bone-in ham (especially D’artagnan’s Heritage Hickory Smoked Ham) is out of this world but most of the time we don’t need that much ham. Their Petite Boneless Heritage Ham is also very flavorful as is the spiral sliced ham that Trish will have at the meat counter – and their sizes are more manageable. I have major papers due right after Easter so I am not coming back to New Jersey and I wasn’t going to cook, but after writing this newsletter, I have invited several classmates for Easter dinner and I will be serving D’Artagnan’s Petite Heritage Ham with scalloped potatoes and whatever everyone else brings. I can’t wait - especially since there should be some left over for ham sandwiches and omelets!

Happy eating!

Sallie Smith


REFERENCES –

Davidson, Alan. The Penguin Companion to Food. Penguin Books, New York, 2002.

Herbst, Sharon Tyler. Food Lover’s Companion. Barron’s, NY, 2001.

The Best Recipe from Cooks’ Illustrated. Boston Common Press, Boston, 1999.

www.marthastewart.com
www.saveur.com