When holiday’s come especially Easter and Christmas, there’s one food that my family always lasted me after I asked for it. And that would be the question of course you want us to have him again for the holiday. I say this because one of my memorable pieces of childhood is my mother making a beautiful ham for Easter. It’s not just the way that the food tasted but it’s really the visual presentation of the ham. Strangely it’s called Marilyn ham but okay nothing against Maryland here. Because really it’s a ham that’s stuffed with a greens and these greens can be any sort of greens from the grocery store. As we all know we can get sliced ham that comes in slices and it’s only natural you can stuff this ham with something that you might really find very tasty. That’s the spirit of this recipe is that it takes anything including collard greens mustard greens arugula broccolini broccoli any type of greens from the Shelf you chop them up and you simply put a recipe of brown sugar, pepper and the natural salt of the ham and the taste of the ham was it smoking us combined with these beautiful tasting herbs that come out of the oven is just simply heaven.
So we all know that there’s such an incredible connection to food that we have and especially food that was made by who, of course our loved ones and in particularly our mother. As we know our mothers are thoughts of safety and attachment and always being our hero. It’s interesting how our mothers actually can really never do enough for us because that’s how much we want to be loved for them. We want to be so love for them. But I’ll tell you every Easter I make this hand and I realize it’s the connection to my mother so with this said, let me give you the following recipe.
General Tips
The hand that I usually buy is from Smithfield Farms. Now Smithfield Farms apparently has been bought by a Chinese company and my and my mot However in my past life I was like lucky enough to actually see and hear the CEO is Smithfield Farms it was a really weird experience but he spoke about his Hogs very proudly on how they do natural genetic selection. And that’s why I always loved to buy a Smithfield ham with that in mind that there was someone who really took a care of our healthher courses caution me to make sure that you’re getting the ham from the US when you buy a Smithfield ham because that’s how we usually have always done it. Smithfield is interesting is that they actually cross breed their Hogs and a way to reduce the fat content. And this is and this is using Darwin’s theory of atom Tatian really because as we cross breed jeans together which takes actually a very long time. Yep you got to make babies and then those babies have to be big and then those babies produce ham and then they know they made and they make more babies and such and literally it might even take a century to reduce the fat level.
And as I said before in the greens and in the mom and the words of my mom ” you literally grab anything off the shelf cheapest greens possible whatever we’re going to just take them home and we’re going to put them in the cusinart no big deal”
The other great tip to this recipe is that it’s so darn simple. I literally get a ham off the shelf, even if it says something like I think the last one I bought said like pecan caramelized but that’s not on the ham when you buy it that’s a separate package and again in the words of my mind she’s like ” you don’t want to like take anybody’s else is corn syrup and artificial flavoring she’s like we’re not going to use it throw it out.’ as we all know our mom’s ” got it ” they know how to whip up their greens I know they had to whip up their own sauce they know how to whip up their own flavor so throw out the flavor package it’s easier that way.
The next step to this recipe again in Simplicity you’re literally bringing this this this home and you’re just going to add pepper and brown sugar ultimately
And then the top of it you’re simply going to crust it with cornmeal to keep in the moisture and then you’re going to put it into a flat pan and then pour some orange juice for sweetener on top of it all four again we want to get as much moisture as possible in the cornmeal infusing down into the slices so that the ham stays very moist with the greens in hand.
Now what I found also is that sometimes the herbs or the greens in this instance they don’t fully cook in the ham because a ham is pre-cooked from the store so that’s actually another tip for using a precooked ham and we put in the oven for several hours and sometimes the green still stay a little too chewy. So I recommend and I tried this last time first blanching them but you might have to fully cook the greens to the point of almost being done but maybe just a tad not done because they’re really not going to get cooked too much when it comes down to the cooking or the warming of it rather. But I want to emphasize we don’t want a mushy presentation of greens they need to look fresh it’s better to undercook than overcook them and you want to be between Bland and cooked in the hot water before you put the greens into the ham.
Recipe with Tips
In the spirit of Julia Child, I’ll put my tip underneath it “
1/8 lb to 15 lb ham, Smithfield’s, any flavor, cooked up, already you can even do smoked if you like that
Throw away flavor packet
Grab three to four Bunches of greens from the grocery aisle.
These can be any variety of greens, any mustard greens collard greens and arugula greens broccolini you name it any type of greens that need to be cooked. Use if you like organic you can go that way of course it’s up to you. The key here is once you get these greens you’re going to blank between Blanche and cook them to a certain so that 30 come out of the ham later they will taste cooked as opposed to Chuy
Pepper
-put enough in a ball so that you see sprinkles of it enough into the greens after they come out of the hot water
Recipe Card
8- 15 lb ham
4 bunches greens
6 tablespoon pepper
2 cups cornmeal
2 cups orange juice
Very large flat pan for stove
