Ham: An Obsession With The Hindquarter

FINE COOKING calls it "a witty ode to pork's most primal cut." It's our hymn to backsides: American country ham, European dry-cured hams like prosciutto crudo or jamón ibérico, wet-cured hams like the ones from HoneyBaked, and even fresh hams, the best pork roast you'll ever eat. (Click on the cover to get your copy today.)

MARK (AKA The Writer)

 

BRUCE (AKA The Chef)

DREYDL (AKA The Dog)

The Ultimate Cook Book

Our big compendium cookbook--900 new recipes, tons of cooking tips. You'll be an ultimate cook in no time.

Want to see a video on this book. Check it out here.

Cooking Know-How

WINNER OF THE 2009 GOURMAND AWARD at the Paris cookbook show for the "BEST COOKBOOK IN THE WORLD" for "easy recipes." Also starred reviews in both Publisher's Weekly and Library Journal, a main selection of the Good Cook Book of the Month Club, a selection by NPR as one of the best cookbooks of 2009, and a favorite of the San Jose Mercury--that called us "culinary wonks."

Pizza: Grill It, Bake It, Love It!

Our brand-new pizza book. That's the squash, caramelized onion, and pine nut pie. And there are 89 more.

Cooking For Two

Every dish for just two--and no waste. Cut it, open it--and use it. It's a feast for twosomes.

The Ultimate Muffin Book

Get your muffins! The chocolate chip ones soon became a holiday tradition in our house.

The Ultimate Ice Cream Book

The book that started a whole career. A quarter million copies in print and still going strong!

The Ultimate Frozen Dessert Book

And a follow-up to The Ultimate Ice Cream Book, this time with gelato, sherbet, granita, and a groaning board of ice cream cakes and frozen pies!

The Ultimate Chocolate Cookie Book

Cookies galore--and every one of them with chocolate: chips, shavings, cocoa, melted, irresistible.

The Ultimate Peanut Butter Book

America's favorite spread? Yes, but also the world's. Wait until you see all the no-cook Asian sauces, the African stew, the Filipino braise, and a host of favorites from breakfast to dessert!

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A one-book compendium for America's favorite seafood

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Up, shaken, frozen, pitcher punches, shooters--here's a guide to drinks to make your next party a splash

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Fudgy, cakey, you name it--even a chapter on brownie mix doctor recipes--here's a book that'll keep everyone smiling!

The Ultimate Candy Book

A reviewer on amazon called it "an evil book." We could only hope so. Gooey, crunchy, a ton of chocolate barks, fudge, divinity, and it just keeps going.

The Ultimate Potato Book

Spuds forever! We love everything about the potato--and in this book, we made our favorite vegetable front and center since every recipe is a main course with spuds aplenty.

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The Great Ham Contest

Don't miss the REAL FOOD HAS CURVES ham contest, your chance to win a gift certificate for an American country ham (or whatever you want) from one of the United States' best producers, Nancy Newsom. For the contest details, click here. And get obsessed with this hindquarter!

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REVIEWS OF COOKING KNOW-HOW

Don't take our word for it. Here are some cool reviews of COOKING KNOW-HOW:

weightwatchers.com

In Mama's Kitchen

Publisher's Weekly

5 Second Rule

Richmond Times-Dispatch

San Jose Mercury News

The Winston Salem Journal

Super Chef

NPR--chosen one of the ten best cookbooks for the summer of 2009

Relish Magazine (although the writer complains that I use too many big words. Heaven forfend!)

And if you want to see an outrageous clip of us on San Francisco TV, check out our appearance on A View From The Bay here.

Or for white bean veggie burgers on the same show--in which I go off on a bizarre jag about the ethics of cruising--click here.

DANCING WITH A COLLIE

brought on no doubt by that empty bottle of wine on top of the fridge

JOIN US!

We'd love to have you join us at Delia's Viking Cooking School in Wallingford, Connecticut, on the night of March 22nd as we bring down the house with all things ham. We're cooking exciting recipes from our new book, all about our obsession with that hindquarter. Click here for more information.

Can't make it to Wallingford, Connecticut? Join us at Draeger's market in San Mateo, California, on April 27th for a West Coast cooking class on all things ham! To sign up or to find out more, check it out here.

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    Bruce's Blog

    Bruce has his own blog. A knitting blog. Knits Men Want. It's a companion site to his new knitting book: ten rules every woman should know before she knits for a man--plus ten patterns men are guaranteed to like. And I do. I have some of the sweaters. And I wear them. Imagine that. Check on the cover to check it out.

    Entries in obsession (3)

    Thursday
    04Mar2010

    Pistachio Cardamom Cookies

    | Comment4 Comments

    OK, I'm going back to blogging recipes--but if you haven't checked them out, make sure you read the comments for the threads to both canola oil (here) and the larger question of what real food is (here). People have written some bang-up, crazy-good things--and the conversation is too important to miss. But we can continue on there as I continue on here.

    So. . . .

    Lately, I've been obsessed with cardamom, my new favorite "warm" spice (as in "warm in the body," like cinnamon, nutmeg, and mace--not hot, and not herbaceous).

    I've been putting it in chocolate cake, in ice cream, in chicken sautés, in just about everything. I was reading some cookbooks this morning and found a recipe for sour cherry cardamom clafouti. I almost passed out.

    Last week, probably to stifle my cardamom whining, Bruce morphed the Indian sweet, kaju makrum (cashew macaroons) into ridiculously crisp wafer cookies with pistachios and, yes, cardamom. I swear, all week I didn't eat any sweets during the day so I could have a small stack of these with a glass of milk after dinner, my little-kid dessert while the Olympics were on. I was undone. They're that good. Try them. Promise.

    Click to read more ...

    AuthorMark Scarbrough | Posted on DateThursday, March 4, 2010 at 10:19AM
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    Tuesday
    23Feb2010

    Pizza with Prosciutto and Artichokes

    | Comment4 Comments

    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.

    Click to read more ...

    AuthorMark Scarbrough | Posted on DateTuesday, February 23, 2010 at 1:20PM
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    Monday
    01Feb2010

    Cider-Cured, Braised Ham

    | Comment5 Comments

    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.

    Click to read more ...

    AuthorMark Scarbrough | Posted on DateMonday, February 1, 2010 at 1:43PM
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