Pizza with Prosciutto and Artichokes

It's the last of the weeks of our ham tour on this blog. All to celebrate the publication of the new book: HAM: AN OBSESSION WITH THE HINDQUARTER--which is now officially out and, as they say, available at fine stores everywhere. Or skip the stores and go online. Get yours here. While it's hot!

Today, we've got a pizza with prosciutto, one of a couple pies in the book--but one of about 25 recipes in a larger chapter that deals with all the European dry-cured hams, from jamón ibérico to sunca, from presunto to jambon d'ardennes, speck to jambon de vendée.

In some ways, these hams represent the very origins of pig curing. They are undoubtedly the ancestors of American country hams, like Virginia hams (and the Kentucky ones I found in the trip narrated in the book). And for many foodies, they're the sine qua non, the (as Aquinas called such a thing) first and final element.

Ha! A reference to Aquinas on a food blog. And a direct tie between medieval scholasticism and ham. My work is done here. Except for the recipe for today.

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Ham Cacciatore

Another week, another ham, all in celebration of our new book: HAM: AN OBSESSION WITH THE HINDQUARTER, right there on the right. It's published March 1st--and it's a stunner: beautiful design, lots of photographs, and (well) a bit of snark from yours truly. Let's just say at one point there's a bad case of maggots in a French charcuterie. (If that doesn't make you want to buy a cookbook, what will?)

But of course, it's not all gorgeousness. Recipe-testing is a mess. Our kitchen gets the industrial treatment on a daily basis. I can't tell you how many bottles of counter cleaner I go through in a month. Amazing. All this food, at a constant pace, with more books to come. Whew. No wonder I need a vacation. But not from ham.

This week, I'm writing about the second of the four types of ham: a fresh ham. Last week, we did the wet cure. But now we're taking on the most elemental way to make a ham: a big pork roast, not smoked, not cured in any way.

In the book, there are lots of recipes for leftovers, for smaller portions, but I thought I'd share with you one of my favorite dishes Bruce created: the ham cacciatore.

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Cider-Cured, Braised Ham

Welcome to ham month on the blog. Don't worry: it won't be ham all the time. But all month, I'm going to be featuring snippets from our new book: HAM: AN OBSESSION WITH THE HINDQUARTER. Up top on this page sits the ham for today: a cured, braised one. And there to the right on the page sits the book itself. It's already available on amazon--and will be published in just a few weeks.

I can't wait until you see it! It's the first time I've written a book in first-person. All our other books are written as "we." This one's "I." It's my fractured, at-times hilarious take on how Bruce developed those 100 recipes, plus the story of how we raised our own pig, took it to slaughter, tried to cure one leg, failed, tried again, and learned more about ham than you can imagine, including tres chic European hams and down-home American country hams.

To quote from the introduction:

From that first fateful day when we started this project [you'll have to read about it--let's just say it involves the lethal combo of Eudora Welty and porn], Bruce and I have endured refrigerators full of ham leftovers, with hunks of pork being delivered by UPS every afternoon; I've been to northern Kentucky in the dead of freeze-butt winter; both of us have been to a ramshackle slaughterhouse in rural Massachusetts; and we have borne witness to an enormous toe-on pig leg in our back refrigerator, a swarm of maggots in a French charcuterie, and a group of chic, black-bedecked New Yorkers eating a quivering pile of ham in aspic.

So let's get our first sneak-peak recipe from the book: the way to make your own wet-cured ham.

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