Long Island Larder: An Easter Dinner
The quintessentially American menu is generally conceded to be our Thanksgiving dinner. In some households the lineup is set in stone (except for playful anarchists like Calvin Trillin, who substitutes spaghetti carbonara for turkey and stuffing).
But we also have another festive occasion where the gastronomic star is set all across the American heavens: The Easter Ham.
Europeans and Christians around the Mediterranean go for the Paschal Lamb to celebrate the risen Christ, the Lamb of God. Americans, understandably, since we've always had plenty of pigs and, at least in earlier days, not many sheep, elected to choose a prize ham from their smokehouses to celebrate this most joyous day in the religious calendar.
Easter Sunday is the end of the long, somber season of Lent, which, in observant households, meant no meat from Shrove Tuesday onward and a last truly abstemious Holy Week, the seven days before Easter, when meals were smaller and smaller and more austere - to the point where hard-boiled eggs must have seemed a feast.
So what meal could possibly be more enthusiastically anticipated than the joyous Easter feast? On the East End, the Polish butchers around Riverhead and Bridgehampton used to make a special kielbasa for this great meal. Ask around - the Polish sausage is great on the grill, though some people serve it cold, just as it comes, which would not be my choice.
Even if you didn't give up chocolate (as I always did) or anything else (in the days when people were still permitted tobacco, some gave up smoking) for Lent, this is still a great family occasion. Whether gigot or jambon is your dream, here's how to satisfy it.
Though you may have to special-order it, the great old carefully cured and smoked hams that are a treasure of American gastronomy are still the One True Ham, unchallenged for flavor supremacy. (Those spiral-cut mail-order "hams" may be convenient, but they bear little resemblance to the real country hams from American farms in Kentucky, Virginia, Georgia, North and South Carolina, and other remote pockets of ham culture.) These hams must be soaked in several changes of cold water over a period of two or three days to rehydrate and de-salt them. This is ab-solutely necessary or the flesh will be unpalatably salty and dry.
Serves multitudes.
1 aged, cured country ham, about 12 to 14 lbs.
1 gallon real, unpasteurized fresh cider or 1 liter dry rose wine plus 3 liters water
4 stalks celery with tops
4 whole scraped carrots
2 dried bay leaves
1 large onion stuck with 3 cloves
1/2 cup brown sugar
Garnish:
1 cup (approx.) fine stale breadcrumbs
1/2 cup minced fresh parsley
1/4 cup minced fresh sage (optional)
12 to 24 small to medium hard-boiled eggs, shelled and colored pale pastels with pure food dyes
2 large bunches fresh, stemmed watercress
Water: If you have very hard water with lots of iron and minerals, buy bottled water to cook the ham in - not mineral water, just plain bottled water.
Scrub the ham in warm running water with a stiff brush. If there is any mold, just scrape it off with a blunt knife; it is harmless. These days most ham-boilers, large oval copper vessels the size of a baby's bathtub, are usually artfully filled with flowers in the windows of antiques shops. But if you can beg, borrow or steal one, these are, of course, ideal for both soaking and cooking the ham. A large galvanized washtub can substitute for the soaking. Change the water every 12 hours for at least 2 days and taste the water of the last soaking to be sure it is not still too salty.
The Five-and-Ten
Lay the soaked and rinsed ham in a large pan. A blue granite roaster can still be found in good hardware stores: the Emporium in Sag Harbor, the Ace in East Hampton, or the one on Main Street in Bridgehampton, or, don't forget, Sag Harbor's pride and joy. the Last Five & Dime on the East End - though probably not in fancy kitchenwares shops.
Europeans celebrate Easter with the Paschal Lamb. Americans choose a prize smokehouse ham.
Add all the remaining ingredients except the garnish. Bring it to the simmer and slowly poach the ham, covered with the lid, for about four hours. Test with a long metal skewer for tenderness, then let the ham cool, uncovered, in its broth (which will be discarded).
Cut a shallow slit in the skin all the length of the ham and with a sharp knife remove the skin. Save it for crackling, which is ham rind roasted crisp but not leathery. Pare the ham fat smooth, leaving about half an inch of pure white fat. Mix the bread crumbs with the fresh herbs (not dried) and pat the mixture all over the fat surface.
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Place the ham on a flat rack and bake it in the center of the oven just until the crumbs are golden brown. Remove and cool to room temperature.
Study Up On Carving
Hot country ham is impossible to carve elegantly, which means in thin slices, as thin as you can make them using a long, very sharp ham knife, most definitely not serrated.
Carving a ham is not a job for the inexperienced. If you think cooking has gone to the bow-wows in this "take-out" generation, imagine what's happened to carving!
Get yourself a video and study it, or watch how a true Parma ham is sliced lengthwise along the bone - maybe "Molto Mario" will show it on the Food Network; he's the best thing on that network and fortunately seems to be on many times a day (which makes me wonder what's happening back at his restaurant Po, one of my favorites in Greenwich Village).
On The Net
Speaking of the Internet: go to http://www.foodwine.com and check out eGGbasket. There's a Virginia company with hams that sound great, and its E-mail address is:
You can get a whole, uncooked, uncarved ham of around 12 pounds for about $43. You can also get them as "fixed" as you like: cooked and sliced thin.
Other purveyors abound, but at this late date, check out the country hams for the summer hilarity season, which is upon us. Ham is so omnipresent on summer buffet tables, I tend to pass it on by.
However, real country ham served in little slivers on tiny biscuits or corn muffins is as different from that as prosciutto is from Spam.
Easter Leg of Lamb
The gigot, as the French call it, couldn't be easier to cook. However, it is just as ornery to carve properly unless the hip chops are removed and the shank bone is left reasonably long. Easiest of all, have the leg "frenched." That's with the hip bones removed and only the long leg bone left in.
You can, of course, have the whole leg boned out, but you lose a lot of flavor that way. Have the butcher remove the "fell," the tough membrane that lies under the fat.
Serves eight
1 whole fresh leg of lamb, trimmed
2 cloves garlic
1 tsp. fresh thyme leaves
Olive oil
Kosher salt and coarse pepper
16 slender fresh carrots
2 boxes frozen artichoke hearts, thawed
Wipe the lamb and excise any fat you find left on it. Peel and sliver the garlic, then roll it in thyme. Make little incisions in the lamb with the point of a small, sharp knife and insert these garlic slivers evenly into the leg. Rub it well with olive oil and salt and pepper. If the gigot is "frenched," tie the large end into shape.
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. and lay the lamb on a rack in a large open roasting pan. Set it in the middle of the oven. Pour a small glass of water in the pan to catch the first drippings so that they won't burn.
Roasting Time
Roast the meat for 45 minutes, then add the carrots, which have been pre-cooked to the half-done stage in a steamer or the microwave. Baste them in the meat juices. Add the artichokes just about 10 minutes before the lamb is done, which will be in another 30 minutes approximately.
An instant-read thermometer should read no more than 125 degrees for medium-rare. as the lamb will continue cooking on residual heat while its juices retreat into the meat after taking it from the oven. Leave it in a warm place, tented loosely with foil.
Arrange the gigot on a very hot platter and garnish it with the carrots and artichokes. Julia Child has gone over the carving of lamb on her "French Chef" series, which seems to be on TV reruns on the food network (like "Ryan's Daughter," which ran in a Dublin theater for about 15 years) , so I won't.
To Be Elegant:
Again, though, it's more elegant and practical to carve the lamb holding it by the shank bone and slicing downward in longish, thin slices - this can be done in the kitchen if no carving genius is at hand - before arranging them on the platter.
If there's no one around with any kind of carving skills, have the whole lamb boned and tied. Then you can just slice straight down into the roll of meat, like slicing bread. But not with a bread knife, please.
Leg of lamb is a great candidate for cooking outdoors on a rotisserie-equipped grill, or just on a plain grill following the manufacturer's advice manual. Charcoal grillers will have to use the "indirect method" to avoid burning the meat.
I have a new grill awaiting me when I get back to Sag Harbor that I'm itching to try out - you'll be getting everything but grilled ice cream recipes from me when that happens.
(There really is "Fried Ice Cream" featured in a place in Vermont and a Japanese restaurant in Key West - so it can be done, though not by me.)
Incidentally, I'd never found anything very satisfactory to do with leftover cold lamb until I tried it in a sandwich with seven-grain bread and some hot mango chutney.