Stuffed Ham, Southern Maryland Style
(I've never had it, but sharing for history's sake.)
There are as many recipes for southern Maryland stuffed ham as there are families in St. Mary’s County. It shows up on Christmas and Easter tables, and at almost every community fund-raising supper. This recipe, compiled from cooks whose families have been making it for generations, uses raw stuffing and is spiced with plenty of black and red pepper. Because the ham boils for so long, the spiciness will mellow. The most challenging part is the finding the ham itself. Corned hams — which are simply fresh hams that have been cured in salt or brine — aren’t usually in the grocery meat case, and butchers will often require advance orders. Corning your own fresh ham is not hard, but it can take several days and turns this into even more of a project.
Yield:
8 to 12 servings, plus leftovers
½of a fresh or corned ham (8 to 12 pounds)
1cup kosher salt plus more, if corning
3pounds green cabbage
1pound curly kale, or a mixture of other greens like mustard greens or watercress
2medium yellow onions (about 1 pound)
1bunch scallions (about 7)
1½tablespoons coarsely ground black pepper
1½tablespoons red-pepper flakes
1tablespoon mustard seed
1tablespoon celery seed
1teaspoon cayenne
1tablespoon salt
Make the stuffing: The goal is to chop all the vegetables so the pieces are small and relatively uniform in size. Begin by chopping the cabbage. A food processor with a shredding blade is helpful. Place the cabbage in a large pan or bowl. Remove large stems from the kale and other greens, if you are using them, and chop. (Tip: Freeze cleaned, whole kale leaves overnight in plastic bags, then break up the frozen leaves while still in the bag and add to the stuffing mixture.) Chop the yellow onions and scallions, and add them to the cabbage and kale.
Step 3
Mix the vegetables well and add the spices. Mix again. (Your hands will work best for this, but wear gloves if your skin is sensitive to pepper.) Taste the stuffing and adjust, adding more cayenne or red-pepper flakes for a more intense spiciness. Keep in mind that the long boiling time will soften the heat.
Step 4
Stuff the ham: Remove the bone, or have the butcher remove it for you. The ham should be almost butterflied. Add the bone to a pot large enough to hold the ham, fill with enough water to cover it and begin to heat the water to a boil.
Step 5
While the water heats, set the ham on a sheet pan and cut slits about 3 inches long and 2 inches deep in a few places to make pockets, being careful not to slice through the meat completely. The number of slits will depend on the size of the ham. The goal is an even distribution of stuffing. Pack the slits tightly with stuffing, and add stuffing to the center of the ham where the bone was. Close the ham and secure it with kitchen string.
Step 6
Prepare a large square of cheesecloth at least 3 layers thick. Spoon a layer of stuffing over the cheesecloth and set the ham on it. Pack more stuffing on the top and sides of the ham. Gather the corners of the cheesecloth to the top and twist tightly to form a compact package. Tie the top tightly with string.
Step 7
Lower the ham into boiling water, reduce heat to a simmer and add any juice that has collected from the stuffing. Skim any foam that rises. Cook, covered, for about 15 minutes per pound, or until the internal temperature reaches 165 degrees.
Step 8
Turn off the heat and let the ham cool slightly in the water, about an hour. (Old-timers simply put the whole pot on the porch overnight if the weather was cool, or left it on the stove until completely cooled.) Drain the ham in a colander and refrigerate for at least 6 hours or overnight. Remove the cheesecloth and string, and reserve any stuffing around the ham.
* * *
How stuffed ham became the specialty of St. Mary’s County isn’t a question with an easy answer, said Joyce White, a food historian in Maryland.
The ham has a very distant British cousin called stuffed chine. The dish, from Lincolnshire, is made from a brined chunk of pork taken from between the shoulder blades. Herbs are stuffed into slashes in the meat, and then the whole thing is boiled in muslin.
Ms. White and other regional historians say it’s more likely that the dish has Afro-Caribbean roots; indentured or enslaved West Africans would season the greens and onions left over in the winter garden with red pepper, and stuff it into jowls or whatever chunks of pork they had on hand.
But as in so many parts of the South, the line between black and white food is blurry.
Stuffed ham recipes have shown up in “The Virginia Housewife,” which Mary Randolph published in 1824, but the ham is smoked. Recipes with cabbage and brined ham are more prominent in “300 Years of Black Cooking in St. Mary’s County,” which was published in 1975 and traces the history of the ham back centuries.
“It floated up and got adopted into the white food traditions,” Ms. White said. “When you’re cooking and you can’t read, you are going to follow your own instinct and taste but adjust it for the white people for whom you are cooking.”
The result is an amalgam of a dish, with a cooking method that has been developed and passed on in classic folk tradition — with generations of observation and repetition, both in black households and white.'>>>
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/19/dining/maryland-stuffed-ham.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
