Tag: ham

After a mixup where the beans I had originally planned for a Boston Baked Beans dish didn't manage to fully soak overnight, I had to run to the store and grab some ingredients to quickly whip up a backup dish, broccoli and ham gratin.

• About a pound of broccoli, stems included
• 8-10 slices deli ham
• Parmesan and cheddar cheese for topping
• Breadcrumbs
• 2 cups of milk
• 1 stick of butter
• 4 tbls flour
• Dried sage
• Black pepper
• Dry mustard

After cutting the broccoli down (including stems) to florets and small discs, I put them on to boil. After they'd softened slightly, I spread them across the bottom of the baking dish. Next, I mixed up a bechamel (melted the butter, mixed in the flour, then took off the heat and mixed in the milk). After putting the milk back on the heat and whisking heavily, I added a dash of sage and mustard, then ground in some pepper.

After tearing the ham into shreds and laying it across the top of the broccoli, I added the bechamel, covered the top with cheese and breadcrumbs, and put it into the oven at 350 degrees for half an hour.

Unfortunately, I let it cook a little longer, and I really shouldn't have; the broccoli dried up a bit. I'm looking forward to trying this one again sometime soon, however.

Due to Tele falling ill this week, I was in charge of the Thanksgiving meal. I had no choice but to step up and accomplish the task. So, I did. I made the whole meal.

I forgot to take pre-eating pictures of the Thanksgiving table, but I did get you the after pics.

The left side of the table in clockwise order: mashed potatoes, Praline Yams, Whole Cranberry Sauce, Cranberry Relish, StoveTop Cornbread Stuffing, and HoneyBaked Ham.

The right side of the table starting from the back of the table and moving forward: Dutch Apple Pie with Never-Fail Pie Crust, Sweet Corn Muffins, Cranberry Salad, CornBread, Honey Maid Cinnamon Sticks and Bees for the fluff, Fluff with fresh strawberries, PineCone Spread with Original Triscuits.

Not pictured but included in the food lineup of the evening: Corn on the cob roasted under the broiler and Chatham Village Cranberry Herb Stuffing.

The only thing I didn't get to make was my grandma's Pumpkin Cookies. But the apple pie was so yummy it was okay that the cookies were missing.

All of us here at EU just want to wish you a Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope your kitchen is full of wonderful smells right about now. Mine smells of a made from scratch Apple Pie that I just pulled from the oven.

Rather than a turkey we have opted for a HoneyBaked Ham. That has left the oven free for me to do all sorts of baking today. Next on the agenda is cornbread. I have yet to decide if I am going to make sweet corn muffins or basic corn bread. I'll have to get that figured out shortly. Also, I am going to try to squeeze in a batch of my grandma's Pumpkin Cookies.

Happy Baking!

This weekend, I once again proffered my fantastic cookery in two dishes- one sublime, one subpar. Not to say the subpar one didn't come out alright...

The night before grocery day is always a bit of a scrounge for miscible ingredients, since there's not much to plan a main course around. While the Tart was telling me the same three ingredients she'd been mentioning every night for a week - eggs, bacon, and potatoes - I used my fantastic powers of looking at things and discovered a bag of thin egg noodles.

Since we stock about twenty billion cans of broth just in case we need one, I salvaged two cans of chicken stock and set both of these out. Now, I needed something interesting, something that would keep this from turning into a generic chicken noodle soup.

After poking around in the fridge, I found a third of a ham steak in a tupperware container. Now, I remembered this ham steak. Sort of. Kind of. You see, we'd had it for quite a while. I might have named it had I remembered it existed.

I lifted the lid and sniffed. Okay, this smells bad. Or does it? I remembered something I heard a teacher say in high school- if you accidentally switch sodas with someone else, the first sip always tastes like the soda you were expecting. Human suggestibility is prominent in our sensory awareness, being the point. So I sniffed again and convinced myself that what I felt was the florid odor of decay was, in fact, just the inscrutable hamminess of... well, ham.

I mean, back during the Great Depression they threw rashers of bacon out in the streets, right? Bacon lasts forever by dint of its high salt and low moisture content. Isn't ham cured pretty much the same way? Waste not, want not. With all those things I convinced myself to cook.

So, I diced the ham steak and fried it with some butter in a large skillet, then added the broth and noodles. Nice and simple. Nobody would suspect that this was Hindenberg ham. Would they?

Figuring that if we were all going to die from some ungodly taint, I'd rather be hung as a sheep than as a lamb, I made sure to add extra chunks to my serving. I couldn't get the thought that I was serving this to small children out of my head.

You know what? It turned out pretty good. I didn't get sick. The ham was kind of tangy though. Nah. It's all in my head.

Hi all,

Usually, we here at EU are pretty religion agnostic when it comes to our articles. Mainly I think because we don't want to offend anyone or misrepresent anyones holidays. However, I figure I'd touch a bit on Slava, since it has so much to do with food.

Basically, Slava is a feast that's held for the patron saint of the family in Orthodox Christian homes.

When I say feast, I mean FEAST.

The wife and I went the other day to some of our Serbian friends' Slava. With the exception of eating until I thought I was going to die, it was pretty cool.

First, there's soup. Then, stuffed cabbage. Then, sliced Pork loin, Chicken, Lamb, country ham, and salami. And cheese. and then there's dessert. Baklava, cakes, cookies, something I can't remember.

Did I mention there was drinking? Oh probably not.

At the hosts request, we drank. alot. I drank 5 heinekens, and 2 glasses of cognac, along with 3 shots of plum brandy. I was smashed.

Plum brandy is good.

I digress. There should be plenty more holidays where you eat until gluttony no longer applies and it turns into some new word that hasn't been made up yet.

This was surprisingly wonderful. It sounds very simple, but hey, everyone likes a ham and cheese that thinks it better than you.

Ham and Cheese Toast

Serves 4

• 1 small French stick, sliced into 12 rounds (we used a sourdough baguette)
• 50g/2 oz/ ½ cup grated cheese, such as Manchego or Cheddar. (We used Cheddar, damn albertsons and lack of Manchego. Parmesan cheese would be grrreat here too.)
• 1 large garlic glove, peeled
• 3 slices of salt-cured ham (prosciutto), quartered
• Coarse black pepper

Toast the bread under a hot grill until both sides are golden brown. Cut the garlic glove in half and rub the cut surfaces over one side of each piece of toast. Put the ham on top of the garlic-flavoured toast. Wrinkle the ham so that it fits loosely on the toast round. Top each toast with grated cheese, then sprinkle with the pepper. Get back to the grill and cook for about 1-2 minutes until the cheese is melted.

We used a Pizza oven that Tele had laying around his living room for this, but a toaster oven would work just as well.

Serve hot.

Happy Thanksgiving and related holy days from Edible Unknown! My particular Thanksgiving opened my eyes to the wonders of allspice, a Carribean ingredient named by the English, who thought that it included the flavors of cloves, nutmeg, pepper, and cinnamon, among others.

You see, I was making dinner, and in lieu of turkey (which I bloody well hate, no matter what Ben Franklin thought) we had this honey-cured ham. Not being in my normal kitchen, I searched around the spice cabinet, which had unfortunately been through a bit of a downsizing (as no-longer fresh spices were removed). So I did what any good person faced with a ham might do- I took a slice, started dumping spices on my hand, and took several taste tests until I came up with a combination I could do well with.

This was a bit of a shotgun Thanksgiving in the sense that the shopping had already been done, and I had not enough time to make anything representing a marinade. After using foil paper, a well-sized crockery, and some water to build a punk-rock dutch oven for the ham, I patted every inch I could with a mixture of allspice, garlic powder, salt, and pepper, then combined more of this in some melted butter (for drenching it halfway through the cooking process).

Another hurdle to overcome was the organic sweet potatoes, which turned out not to be the ordinary orange tubers we are all used to, but instead a starchy, thin, white-flesh job. Starchy as they were, I didn't think straight baking would be enough, so I dismantled some potatoes and put them into a casserole with some water, baked until soft, mashed, then mixed with orange juice, cloves, black pepper, butter, and brown sugar. When the ham was out and the oven set to broil (to roast some corn on the cob), I sprinkled brown sugar across the top of the casserole and let it caramelize.

It wasn't particularly bad, but as often happens with experimental dishes, it was much better once the flavors had time to set. Or so I heard, the next day.

Here's to holiday adventure! See you later, when I'll be discussing how best to cook relatives who overstay their welcome.