Monday, June 30, 2008

Spiced Peaches

For most of my life, spiced peaches graced the holiday table. Thanksgiving, Christmas, almost any feast featured the oval cut-glass dish with spiced peaches.

Then Del Monte discontinued them. Imagine my horror when I went to get them and they were no longer available. I asked the grocery manager at my local store, and he said they had been discontinued, but he didn’t know whether it was the store or Del Monte. Since no one else packed spiced peaches, I was out of luck.

I went on line and searched the Del Monte web site. It was really not very good. It seemed to be oriented to the buyer for grocery stores, not the consumer. I did determine that spiced peaches were not there.

I e-mailed Del Monte and they sent an unresponsive answer that implied that they had never heard of such a thing. I was appalled. It hadn’t been that long since I had bought them. After all, they were a regular feature of the feast table. That year, the holiday meals were sadly missing the spiced peaches.

At the time, I worked in an office with another daughter of the Old South who remembered spiced peaches as being an integral part of her holiday table as well. We shared memories, and I set out to pack my own the next time peaches were available.

The first problem I ran into was that I could not find small peaches. The Del Monte ones were not a lot larger than apricots, whole, and with the pits. No one sells small fresh peaches. They aren’t in supermarkets or farm markets. I would have to use peach halves and leave out the pits. I found several recipes and sort of melded them. That was before there was so much on the internet. There are now numerous recipes on line, if you’re interested. I checked one out at www.pickyourown.org//peaches_spiced.htm . It has the best directions and tips for the novice canner.

Most recipes call for lots of canning equipment but I cut the quantity down and made do with a large stock pot and a pair of regular tongs. You do need real canning jars with disposable lids. The directions say to leave the jars to cool and check the seal, but it’s really fun to hang around the kitchen and listen to the lids pop as the contents cool and shrink. That pop tells you that you have a true vacuum.

That first year, it was so satisfying to put my own homemade spiced peaches into that cut glass dish. Instead of smallish golden globes, I had golden peach halves glistening in the candlelight. That silky texture was exactly as I remembered from the bought version, and the spicy-tart-sweet flavor was a perfect counterpoint to the richness of traditional Thanksgiving fare. I shared, too – I gave my office mate a jar of the peaches.

It’s too bad that the Del Monte company had so little regard for loyal buyers that they discontinued an item that was a staple for many of us. Sometimes modernization means added work, not reduced work.

Bon Cuisine!

(c) 2008 Katherine DeWitt

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Real Smithfield Ham

I’m glad I was born early enough to experience real Smithfield ham. It isn’t what it used to be.

The original statute specified that the hogs be peanut fed. In 1966, the Virginia Assembly removed the peanut-fed requirement from the official definition. Smithfield hams haven’t been nearly as good since.

Peanut-fed hogs yield a ham that is oily-rich, not lardy-rich. The fat is translucent, not white. The peanut finishing makes a huge difference in the hams, and I don’t have any idea why the Virginia Assembly was so stupid as to degrade the most famous product of its land in that way.

They’re still dry-salt cured, which removes so much moisture they’re flat and thin and the flavor concentrates down to an essence, almost like the reduction of stock to a syrupy consistency when making sauces. The salting and the smoking yield a meat that is dark red, not pink. And in a real peanut-fed ham the rim of fat is narrow and yellowishly translucent. There’s nothing else like it. In the days of real ocean liners, such ships as the France would stock Smithfield hams as the best ham in the world. That’s the world.

Oh, there are country hams and Virginia hams, all of which are intensely salty and rich, but the flavors aren’t right. They just don’t taste as good.

To cook a Smithfield ham, it must be scrubbed of the pepper coating (protects it from insects) and soaked two or three times to remove as much salt as possible. Then it must be simmered for 3 hours. Not 2 ½, not 2 ¾, but 3 full hours. I used to do it in a cast iron kettle that was oval and covered two units of the stove. I couldn’t even lift the thing now if I still had it. I do have a huge graniteware casserole that might take it. I wish I still had occasion to cook a whole Smithfield ham. After simmering, the ham is cooled, the skin removed, and the fat scored in a diamond pattern. A whole clove should be inserted into the center of each diamond of fat. This mimics a pineapple, the traditional symbol of hospitality in the old South. The whole thing, cloves and all, is then glazed with brown sugar softened with a little pineapple juice. Then it must be baked for another hour. That sets the glaze and lets the clove flavor permeate the ham.

The ham is served sliced paper thin, frequently on biscuits. It isn’t usually a main-course kind of thing but an appetizer or party dish. It can be used as a second meat at Thanksgiving meals and a Smithfield ham sandwich is downright decadent.

The “essence of ham” flavor of the meat combined with the salt-sweet combination of the curing and the glazing yields a rich, luxuriant, almost impossibly wondrous flavor. I’m very sorry that those born too late may never have the full experience of a peanut fed ham, but maybe having known it and being unable to repeat it is worse. I really miss real Smithfield ham.

Bon Cuisine

(c) 2008 Katherine DeWitt