This recipe was a favorite of my friend Pat Herold who recently lost her ten-year battle against breast cancer. Every Easter she would bake a ham and glaze it with mustard, brown sugar, peach syrup and bourbon. It was one of her signature dishes and I'm sharing it in tribute to her, my Patricia Ann, an extraordinary home cook.
Pat and I met in college. She had just graduated and I was still a junior when we worked together as part-time entry-level radio producers in Boston. We lived together in student poverty, saving what income we had for rent, cigarettes and lipsticks. We'd pool our grocery money to make the few recipes we knew, subsisting largely on a diet of baked chicken legs and big bowls of egg noodles and cottage cheese. Life and our careers took off and Pat became an Emmy Award-winning television producer and a highly regarded conservationist working to protect the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. But neither of us ever stopped hungering for domesticity and in the decades of our friendship, we spent much of our time together in our kitchens.
She became a great and homey cook, famous for her garlic studded roast leg of lamb (always with the bone and bought at her favorite butcher in Brooklyn, Staubitz Market), green beans with basil, the best Maryland crab cakes I've ever tasted, and huge popover-like Dutch Babies that came to be known as "Dead Babies," re-named by her sons Matthew and Judson when they were riotous toddlers. With her loving life companion and wise and gentle husband Ed Nielsen, Pat and her boys welcomed many to their bountiful tables, whether in Brooklyn or on the eastern shore of Maryland. I was so lucky to have sat at those tables and cooked with her for over 35 years.
Pat was like most home cooks in that she had a repertoire of favorite and practiced dishes. This baked ham is one of them. She would buy a good quality, pre-cooked ham and after rubbing it with brown sugar and mustard, bake it in a warm oven. For the last 45 minutes of cooking, she'd baste it with a mixture of syrup that had been drained from a can of peaches, plus some good bourbon.
The result is exquisite. As was she.
Kate McDonough
Editor, TheCityCook.com
1 9 to 11 pound fully-cooked bone-in ham (either unsliced or spiral cut)
1 15 to 20 oz. can of sliced peaches
1 cup light brown sugar
3 tablespoons dry mustard (Coleman's is always a good choice)
1 shot of Bourbon (1.5 oz.)
- Remove the ham from the refrigerator one hour before you plan to bake it so that it comes to room temperature.
- If you've bought a ham that has skin on it, carefully remove it as well as any extra fat, leaving about 1/4 inch of fat remaining.
- If you wish to add a decorative detail, use a knife to score the surface of the ham into diamond shapes, each about 1-inch side. Be care to not cut too deep into the surface, just enough -- about 1/4-inch -- to create the traditional pattern.
- Pre-heat the oven to 300º F and place the rack in the lower third of the oven so to accommodate the roast pan and ham.
- Drain the can of peaches, saving the syrup. Depending on the size of the can, you will have about 1 cup of syrup.
- Add the bourbon to the peach syrup and hold aside.
- Remove any plastic wrapping from the ham and rinse the ham in cool water. Pat dry with paper towels.
- Place the ham in a large roasting pan, flat/cut side down, so that the mound of the ham rises out of the ham.
- In a small dish, combine the brown sugar and dry mustard. Mix well.
- Using your hands, rub the sugar-mustard mixture all over the ham. Expect some of it to fall into the bottom of the pan.
- Place the ham in the pre-heated oven.
- Cook the ham for a total time of 12 to 15 minutes per pound, or about 2 hours altogether. The purpose here is to heat the ham completely.
- 45 minutes before this total cooking period is done, remove the ham from the oven and pour the peach syrup and bourbon mixture over the ham and return it to the oven. Cook for the remaining 45 minutes, basting every 15 minutes using a long-handled spoon or turkey baster.
- Remove the ham from the oven and let rest for 10 minutes before slicing.
- In a separate sauté pan on top of the stove, sauté the reserved sliced peaches in a little butter until warmed through and the surface and edges of the peaches become a little golden brown.
- Slice the ham and serve, passing the sautéed peach slices separately as a garnish.
Recipes
Advice & Ideas
