The Ham Study Program

It might be said of cooking that those who can, do, and those who can’t, follow recipes. But this is mean spirited. We all need directions when striking out for unknown territory. Recipes are to cooks what road maps are to drivers.

Nevertheless, all mean-spirited observations seem to have some truth in them, and this one is no exception. It is true that cooking is more than slavishly following a recipe, never looking up, as it were, to see where you’re going. A surprising number of promising kitchen hands can be so described. The reasons are just what you would expect: a lack of confidence and vision, and a failure to grasp the underlying structure of what makes successful dishes--as opposed to recipes--work.

In comparison, the good cook has just these qualities. The great cooks have them in abundance. The rest of us call it creativity and look longingly at it, figuring that it’s not for the likes of us.

Actually, one of the things that great cooks have--and I’m not just talking about professional chefs--is the luxury of great ingredients in abundance. It’s not hard to concoct a terrific sauce in a professional kitchen when all you need do is dip your ladle in a pot of simmering stock, add a few truffle shavings and off you go. That’s why professional chefs can be so inventive: The stuff is all there. The other reason is that they have made the same dish day after day and can explore new twists without ever losing a step.

But the home cook is not so fortunate. Most dishes, I imagine, are constructed from careful planning and purchasing. There are only enough of the necessary ingredients to create the intended dish. Anything more will have to be purchased when required. It’s hard to learn to cook that way.

So whenever I am asked about learning how to cook, my first piece of advice is to get a good cookbook. I always suggest these: “Joy of Cooking,” “Simple French Food” by Richard Olney, “Mrs. Chiang’s Szechwan Cookbook” by Ellen Shrecker, and any of Julia Child’s books.

Then I tell them to get a ham. This always takes people by surprise. A ham? More exasperating yet, I tell them that it’s not enough to buy any old ham. They have to get a good one, a ham that tastes like a ham, not one of those water-plumped, tasteless versions fobbed off as hams in many supermarkets.

The advice about getting a ham is not whimsy. It really can help you become a good cook, a real cook. An old definition of eternity is “two people and one ham.” A real ham, weighing 15 to 20 pounds, is sort of eternity for the cook as well.

Unless you are feeding a platoon, it will take months before you use every last scrap. You will come home one day, finding nothing to eat in the house except a box of some kind of dried pasta, a shelf full of dried herbs and spices, maybe a little olive oil and that eternal ham hunkering in the refrigerator. And then the challenge begins.

The other night I purchased some chicken breasts and some vegetables that appealed to me. I honestly didn’t know what I was going to prepare, but I knew I had enough other ingredients in the larder that I could come up with something.

When I got home, I spied the ham and remembered a dish I hadn’t made in years: chicken (or veal) topped with a thin slice of ham and a generous covering of cheese. It’s a classic that goes by the la-di-da name of chicken cordon bleu. Traditionally, all three ingredients are sandwiched together, dipped in beaten egg, rolled in fine bread crumbs and sauteed in butter. And it’s wonderful that way too. But the dish is only as good as the ham and cheese you use. You get the picture.

What I did was flatten the boned chicken breasts by placing them between two sheets of wax paper and slapping them with the broad side of a cleaver. Then I sauteed them for two minutes on each side in a skillet with just a dab of olive oil. While that was going on, I cut a few very thin slices from the eternal ham and did the same to whatever cheese was in the refrigerator.

Then I fired up the broiler. I put the ham and cheese slices on the sauteed chicken breasts and set the finished items under the broiler until the cheese melted. And that was it. The vegetables were steamed in the meantime and were ready to go. The ham was the key ingredient.

Another example is the equally classic dish called spaghetti carbonara. The situation was all too common: I was hungry but had no inclination to go shopping. I looked to see what was lurking in the kitchen. Of course, there always seems to be pasta in the cupboard. And there were some eggs. Now that opened up opportunities. I could have made a ham omelet (any green pepper?). Or scrambled eggs with ham. But I chose an old favorite, spaghetti carbonara.

To make this dish, you boil up some spaghetti, figuring three ounces of dried pasta per person. In the meantime, you beat some eggs, figuring on one or two per person. To the beaten eggs, you add a very generous amount of fresh, coarsely ground black pepper. It’s a critical flavor ingredient. Also, you add half a cup or more (I always add more) of freshly grated Parmesan cheese. These get whisked together with the eggs and set aside.

Out comes the fabled ham and off come a few quarter-inch-thick slices. The amount is up to you, but don’t overdo it. These are sliced again into matchstick lengths, which are placed in a large skillet and fried over medium-low heat in a tiny amount of oil until crisp. (The original Italian version of this dish calls for sliced hog jowls.)

Just as the spaghetti is cooked and about to be drained, the egg mixture is added to the skillet and stirred around to combine with the ham slivers. Just when the egg mixture starts to firm, the spaghetti is added to the mixture and all the ingredients thoroughly combined. By then, the eggs have finished cooking--they should remain creamy--and the dish portioned out and served with a rustic wine.

The only question remaining is: Whose ham should one buy? And how much will this piece of eternity cost? The ham that I have found the most rewarding, as well as the least expensive, comes through the mail. It is made by Col. Bill Newsom in Princeton, Ky. After buying hams from him for years, I finally made it to Kentucky to visit Newsom’s operation, if that’s the right word. (It consists of two cinder-block smoking sheds he built himself in his back yard.)

The hams are USDA-inspected and are smoked over green hickory wood. Then they are aged for at least eight months before the colonel will sell them. By then they sport a greenish mold on the outside; in the interior, they display tiny white salt specs in the meat. This is great ham. The current price is $2.89 a pound, plus shipping. The hams weigh between 13 and 17 pounds (you tell him what size you want), and shipping to most locations in the country doesn’t usually cost more than $9. The colonel does not use nitrates or nitrates, by the way.

To purchase a ham, call Newsom at (502) 365-2482 or write: Col. Bill Newsom’s Hams, 127 N. Highland Ave., Princeton, Ky. 42445. The colonel now takes Visa and MasterCard.

Although traditionally these hams are soaked overnight, scrubbed and then baked or boiled, I suggest a different approach. What I do is soak the ham overnight and scrub it, but I don’t cook it. Like Italian prosciutto, it is wonderfully flavorful when eaten raw. The length and type of the curing makes it safe. This way you can use the ham as you like, either served raw as an hors d’oeuvre or sliced and cooked as you like, when you want it.