Damn Good Ham

Motivation
This recipe is based on Alton Brown's City Ham recipe.  I've removed a few of the hoop-jumping BS steps.  I've been making it for years now and it has been a very reliable recipe.  After making it for one of my friends he declared that it was "damn good ham" and the name stuck.

I've taken to exclusively making this ham in a disposable aluminum pan because it makes clean up much easier.  If you decide to use a regular roasting pan the brown sugar and ginger snaps will glue themselves to the bottom of the pan and there will be much soaking and scrubbing in your future.  Just be careful not to poke a hole in the aluminum pan when your working with the ham.

This recipe is a project, so be sure get started about 6 hours before you want to eat.

Ingredients
Ham, hock end (bone in)
Brown Sugar
Brown Mustard
Ginger Snap Cookies
Heavy Duty Aluminum Foil
Disposable Aluminum Pan

Method
Heat oven to 250 degrees F.  Remove ham from bag, rinse, and place in aluminum pan.  Using a paring knife, and being careful not to puncture the bottom of the pan, score the skin on the outside of the ham.  Diagonal lines one way then the other work best.  You ideally want 1 inch diamonds of skin when you're done.   Tent ham in aluminum foil and place in oven.  Cook 3-4 hours.

While ham is cooking place ~2 cups of ginger snap cookies in a gallon zip lock bag and crush them with a rolling pin.  (Or you can invent some other methods of making ginger snap cookie crumbs.)

Take ham out of the oven and remove aluminum foil.  Raise the oven temperature to 350 degrees F.

Using a paring knife, and being careful not to puncture the bottom of the pan, remove the diamonds of skin you made earlier.  Smear entire ham with mustard.  I usually just squirt it on and them smear it around with the back of a spoon.  Then sprinkle brown sugar over ham while patting it lightly so it coats the ham.  Lastly sprinkle crushed ginger snap cookies over ham while patting them lightly to coat the ham.

Place coated ham back in the oven uncovered.  Cook for 1 hour then remove and let rest for 30 minutes before carving.

Scalloped Corn

Motivation
This corn casserole was give to me by a friend.  It's the perfect dish when you want something between cornbread and cream corn.

Ingredients
1 can Cream Corn
1 can Whole Kernel Corn
2 Eggs
8 tbsp Butter
1 cup Sour Cream
1 box Jiffy Corn Bread mix

Method
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Mix all the ingredients together and pour into greased 9"x13" baking dish.   Bake for 55 minutes.

Clam Chowder

Motivation
This recipe is based off the "Quick Pantry Clam Chowder" variation of the New England Clam Chowder recipe in The Best Recipe Cookbook.  I've mutated the recipe into my own thing after making it repeatedly over the years.  This is a soup that Dawn will request a couple of times a year.  I don't think I can really call it New England Clam Chowder anymore because New England Clam Chowders typically have cream in them and stopped adding the cream when I realized that it didn't add anything to my version of the soup.

My problem with the original recipe is it never produced a chowder that was thick enough for my liking.  I want a nice thick chowder for cold weather.  Adding cream didn't do anything to appreciably thicken it up.  Then one day when I was making a squash bisque and I suddenly had an inspiration on how to fix my chowder: blend the cooked potatoes into the broth to thicken it.

Ingredients
2 x 8-oz bottles Clam Juice
4 x 6.5 oz cans Minced Clams
6-8 slices Bacon
~4 medium Potatoes (you need enough that you can blend some and still have chunks left over)
1 large Onion
3 tbsp Flour
Dried Thyme
Back Pepper

Mise en Place
Peal and dice potatoes into bite-sized pieces.  Chop Onion.  Dice bacon.  Keep these three items separate because they are added at different stages.

Save the juice from the four cans of minced clams in a container so you can add it with the bottles of clam juice later.

Method
Place small stock pot over medium heat.  Add diced bacon to the pot and stir occasionally until fat has rendered out and bacon is starting to crisp.  Add onions to the pot and cook until softened.  Add flour to the pot and stir to absorb all the bacon grease.  Congratulations, you've just made a roux.  Cook the roux for a couple of minutes.

Add reserved clam juice from cans to the pot a bit at a time.  The roux will dissolve and form a thick liquid.  Continue to add clam juice from clans and then the two bottles.  Once all clam juice is added, add potatoes and thyme to the pot and bring to a simmer.  Simmer until potatoes are soft and crumbly (like for mash potatoes) around 10 minutes.  I usually test them with a fork to see if they're ready.

When potatoes are ready use a slotted spoon to remove 3/4th of the bacon and potatoes from the pot and reserve in a bowl.  This will be the potato and bacon chunks that will be in the final soup.  We're going to blend the rest to thicken the chowder.  I use an immersion blender to blend the remaining quarter of potatoes and bacon right in the stock pot, transferring the contents to a blender would work too.  If the chowder isn't thick enough after blending potatoes and bacon into the broth you can always add a few more potatoes from your reserved stash.

Once desired consistency is reached add reserved potatoes, bacon, and minced clams into chowder.  I usual add a healthy dose of ground black pepper at this point too.  Stir together and serve.

Italian Everyday Soup

Motivation
This is my spin on Italian Wedding Soup.  It's a quick weeknight soup that I make fairly often.  Basically I've extracted what I think are the crucial elements of the soup: broth, orzo, spinach, and parmigiana and reformulated it.  A few years ago I would have added meatballs to that list, but I have since become enlightened and realized that there is no reason to restrict oneself to meatballs.  Currently I favor shredded chicken (not only because it's good, but because I can buy a rotisserie chicken precooked on the way home).

I say it's a quick weeknight dish because you can stop on the way home and pick up all the ingredients at the grocery store and make it in less than half-an-hour.  If you happen to have some home made broth on hand, you know the good stuff, the kind that wobbles once its cooled - this dish becomes especially delightful.

Ingredients
~4 cups Chicken Broth (or stock if you have it)
~1 cup Orzo Pasta
1 bag Pre-washed Spinach
1 large Onion
1 Rotisserie Chicken
Shredded Parmigiana Cheese

Mise en Place
If you don't have a lot of broth you might want to make your orzo pasta first in a pot of water.  If you have a bit extra broth (or stock!) I am big proponent of cooking the orzo in the broth so it absorbs the flavor (plus there is one less pot to clean).

Dice the onion.

Pick the meat off of the rotisserie chicken and set aside.  I usually cut up anything that I don't happen to pull off in pieces down to bite size chunks.  This step can be done while the broth is heating and the pasta is cooking.

Method
Place a bit of olive oil in a small stock pot and heat on medium.  Soften onions.  Add broth and bring to a simmer.  Add orzo.  If orzo is already cooked move onto the next step.  If the orzo is cooking in the broth wait until it's almost done to continue.

Add chicken and any other seasoning you think the soup needs (black pepper, thyme, etc).

When the orzo is ready dump bag of spinach in the pot.  It will look like too much spinach, but it will quickly cook down to almost nothing.  I will occasionally push the spinach beneath the surface of the liquid to speed things along.

Once spinach is cooked down add shredded parmigiana cheese to the soup.  I keep sprinkling it in until it feels right.  Stir and give it a second to melt, then serve.

Cranberry Sauce

Motivation
First off, the wobbly stuff from the can is disgusting.  This is not that cranberry sauce.  This is more of a cranberry chutney than sauce.  This recipe is from the venerable Kenny Shopsin's cookbook, Eat Me (seriously, buy this book).  It's dead simple and easy to dress up.

Ingredients
12 oz bag of Cranberries
1 orange
1 cup Sugar

Mise en Place
Peel the orange.  Remove any really offensive pith.  Break orange into a couple of sections to place in food processor.

Method
Place orange and sugar in food processor and process for about 40 seconds - until orange is totally destroyed.  Add cranberries and pulse until berries are broken into smallish chunks but still have texture.  Transfer to bowl and chill for at least half and hour (after a bit of time the sauce gels a bit and becomes more homogeneous).

Options
There are lots of variations of this simple recipe.  If you want the chutney to be a bit more tart you can hold back on some of the sugar.  You want to pair the chutney with another dish you can add similar or complimentary spices.

I've had good results adding a bit of port to the finished sauce and then gently heating it to incorporate the flavors.

Vietnamese Coffee

Motivation
Vietnamese restaurants make a coffee that is essentially espresso and condensed milk over ice.   Making at home is pretty simple if you have a means of making espresso.  I'm really just adding the recipe here because I can never remember the ratio of espresso grounds to water.

Ingredients
7g Espresso Coffee grounds
4.5oz Water

Method
Make espresso.  While espresso is brewing pour condensed milk into a mug or glass.  I don't usually measure (maybe 2 tbsp), obviously the more you add the lighter and sweeter the coffee will be.

Add hot espresso to mug or glass and stir to combine with condensed milk.  Once combined, add ice cubes and serve.

Quail Leg with Foul Mousse and Pear Foam

Motivation
I need to make an appetizer with the theme of "12 Days of Christmas" for a supper club.  I decided to focus on partridge in a pear tree.  This is actually the very first thing I thought of, mostly because it's the combination of two dishes I had during a very excellent dinner at Bo Innovation recently.

I ended up making up this recipe, although I did get a bit of guidance from two sources.  The Professional Chef cookbook suggested to make a savory mousse you just need to get meat to the consistency of pastry cream then add whipped cream until happy.  The Hydrocolloid Recipe Collection had a recipe for watermelon foam which I patterned my pear foam after.

Ingredients
8 Quail
2 Cornish Game Hens
1 Duck Breast
Duck Stock
1/4 cup Honey
3 tsp Soy Sauce
Butter
Heavy Cream
500 ml Pear Juice
5 g Gelatin

Mise En Place
For Quail Legs:
Remove the leg and thigh as one piece from the quail.  I often got a very small (and sharp!) bone connected to the top of the thigh that I had to carefully remove after dislocating and removing the thigh.  Season leg and thigh with salt and pepper then vacuum seal in bag to prepare for sous vide.  Heat sous vide to 175 degrees F and cook for 4-5 hours.

For Remaining Meat:
Heat Charcoal Grill.  Season quail (minus thighs and legs), Cornish game hens (I removed the backbones and halved mine), and duck breast with salt and pepper.  I then basted them honey and soy sauce.  I heated honey and the soy sauce in the microwave for 20 seconds then brushed it over everything.  I grilled everything over medium-low heat until it looked done.  I pulled the different birds off at different times.  Once the birds cooled down I picked all the meat off the carcasses and broke it into bite sized pieces.

For Pear Foam:
I used sheet gelatin (160 bloom).  Bloom gelatin in water for a few minutes until soft.  Squeeze out water then add sheets to pear foam and heat until dissolved.  Pass through fine-mesh sieve and transfer to iSi whipper.  Charge isi Whipper with N2O cartridge.  Place in fridge until chilled (at least 2 hours).

Method
For Foul Mousse:
Take reserved grilled meat and place in food processor.  Process until it resembles meat sand (I know, I know, but that's what it looks like).  I added about 3/4 cup of duck stock (the good kind that's all wiggly) to a blender and a 1/3 of the meat sand.  Start to blended and add duck stock as needed to keep blender contents moving.  Gradually add the rest of the meat sand.  Keep blending until you have a meat paste.  Pass meat paste through a fine-mesh sieve to remove any larger pieces that survived the blender (this important for a good mousse texture).   It will take a bit of work to coax it through the sieve.

Chilled mixing bowl and whipped heavy cream until you have whipped cream.  Fold whipped cream into meat paste until desired mousse consistency is achieved.  I transfered the mousse into a gallon zip-lock bag so I could easily pipe it into martini glasses for service.

For Quail Legs:
Add butter to a pan and heat on medium high until butter foams and just starts to brown.  Place sous vided quail legs (and thighs) in the pan and quickly sear on each side.  Place seared leg in martini glass with end stuck into the mousse.

For Foam:
Spray foam from iSi Whipper into a bowl then place dollops of foam on top of mousse and next to the quail leg.

Verdict
I'm not going to lie, this recipe is a whole lot of work.  Fortunately it was warmly received and I hope people picked up the vibe that they were eating something special.  I was very gratified that I was able to start with an idea and I was about to create a finished product that articulated that concept with a minimal amount of trial and error (I only did one test run).